Ilie Dumitrescu National Institute of Statistics

1. Third International Conference on Agricultural Statistics MEXSAI-ICAS-III Cancun- Mexico, 2-4 November 2004 Lessons learnt from the 2002 - General Agricultural Census in Romania Ilie Dumitrescu National Institute of Statistics

2. ROMANIA Content I.  General Environment - Romanian Agriculture II. 2002 General Agricultural Census (GAC) a. Main Objectives b. Legal Basis III. GAC - 2002; Lessons learnt (SWOT Analysis) IV. Conclusions

3. Maps

4. ROMANIA I. General Environment

5. I. General Environment ROMANIA Structural Dynamics in Romanian Agriculture: • Reform program started in the 1990’s. • Privatisation of the land resources started with the 1991 land reform. • From a planned, centralised farming system, practised on large agricultural areas, the whole system shifted to a shattered one. • At present, small-scale farming prevails on most of agricultural area, accompanied by a widespread land fragmentation.

6. II. 2002 - General Census of Agriculture ROMANIA a. Main Objectives 1. to obtain an exhaustive picture of the structural characteristics of the national agricultural system; 2. to built a data base, comparable at international level, regarding the key agricultural variables; 3. to provide a sampling frame for the agricultural sample surveys to be carried out between censuses.

7. II. 2002 - General Census of Agriculture ROMANIA b. Premises, requirements and standards • FAOrecommendations, provided in the Programme for the World Census of Agriculture 2000: • to conduct a general census of agriculture in 1996 – 2005; • to apply, for harmonisation criteria, the definitions, concepts and characteristics foreseen into the FAO Program for the World Census of Agriculture 2000. • List of characteristics byEurostatfor the FSS 2003; • Nationalrequests, other than the ones mentioned above.

8. ROMANIA II. The Romanian GAC – 2002 • Data Collection Methods: • Territory of each municipality divided into census sections (max 200 units/enumerator) • Separate census sections, for units with legal status, set up at the level of each locality; responsible: the chief enumerator) • Registration Procedure : - by direct interview for holdings/individual agricultural households (physical persons), by enumerators within the distributed sector; - by self-registering for the units with legal status, under the direct supervision of the chief enumerators.

9. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis STRENGHTS • Institutional willingness to build up, on new basis, the national agricultural statistical system, in compliance with the statistical requirements of Eurostat. • NIS experience in the methodological approach to agricultural censuses.

10. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis STRENGHTS • Progressive improvement of competence and accumulation of know-how for NIS census staff (international working groups + seminars + Phare multi-country programmes + FAO training 2002). • Bilateral technical assistance by EU through the Twinning Program, under national Phare 2000.

11. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis STRENGHTS • High skilled top managers, at county level, in conducting and co-ordinating statistical surveys. • Effective training sessions + internal debate on GAC technical instruments. • Efficient utilisation of limited staff and financial resources. • Young persons, skilled in IT and foreign languages, hired at NIS central level.

12. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis STRENGHTS • Pilot Census in August 2002: testing of census tools and of organisational issues. • Control Survey in February 2003, certified the census coverage and the data quality. • Cost advantages and good skills in census specific activities (Population Census, March 2002): • E-mail facilities, at territorial level, improved communication. • Technical and organisational solutions aimed to raise GAC overall quality • Institutional effort for a proper IT endowment.

13. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis WEAKNESSES • Lack of structural information on Romanian agriculture -> impossibility to set a size threshold before census operations. • Land fragmentation. -> very large number of units for enumeration (preliminary results of the census: 4,760 thou. units, of which 4,737 thou. individual holdings/ households).

14. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis WEAKNESSES • Lack of clear definition of the agricultural holding, as a statistical observation unit. • Lack of harmonisation between the methodological approach used in the census and the one used in the current statistical surveys. • NO Statistical Farm Register available -> impact on census registering lists. • Lack of an accurate Cadastre register -> impact on census registering lists. • Large number of persons living in other locality than the location of the agr. unit (land owners in urban areas).

15. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis WEAKNESSES • Existence of three levels of census co-ordination (MAFF, NIS, and MPA). • Lack of a national network of specialised enumerators. • Short time intervals between census milestones (designing, printing and delivering of census tools). • Overlapping of census activities with other projects. • Limited time for the census know-how implementation. • Limited staff, both in term of quantity and skills.

16. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis OPPORTUNITIES • Experience gained by the Romanian staff involved in census activities • Know-how transfer from the Twinning Project under the National Phare 2000 for compliance of the Romanian agricultural statistical system with EU norms and standards • Harmonisation of national census methodology with EU requirements and FAO recommendations. • Obtaining indicators comparable at international level, for the main agricultural variables.

17. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis OPPORTUNITIES • Set up the sampling frame needed for the development of the statistical system of surveys in agriculture • Set up the basis for defining a proper threshold, in order to define the Romanian agricultural holding, as statistical observation unit, according to EU requirements and national constraints. • Set up the Statistical Farm Register. • Set up of the global database for the development of the system of agricultural statistics. • Data reconciliation: census results vs. current statistics

18. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis OPPORTUNITIES • Setting up a national network of specialised trainers and enumerators • Awareness of other Romanian institutional bodies for the need of using the new set of indicators developed under the agricultural census. • Get the interest of the users in the census results and increase their trust in agricultural statistical data.

19. ROMANIA III. SWOT Analysis THREATS • Burden of implementing new requirements at once in all the agricultural statistical domains. • Insufficient human resources for developing on new foundations all the agricultural statistical system, considering the milestones imposed by the EU accession process. • Updating of the Farm Register. • Breaks in time series, as other methodological approaches were in place up to present.