From Tragedy to Renaissance : Improving Agricultural Data for Better Policies

Agricultural development is an essential engine of growth and poverty reduction, yet agricultural data suffer from poor quality and narrow sectoral focus. There are several reasons for this: (1) difficult-to-measure smallholder agriculture is prevalent in poor countries; (2) agricultural data are co...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Carletto, Calogero, Jolliffe, Dean, Banerjee, Raka
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Taylor and Francis 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21606
Description
Summary:Agricultural development is an essential engine of growth and poverty reduction, yet agricultural data suffer from poor quality and narrow sectoral focus. There are several reasons for this: (1) difficult-to-measure smallholder agriculture is prevalent in poor countries; (2) agricultural data are collected with little coordination across sectors; and (3) poor analysis undermines the demand for high-quality data. This article argues that initiatives like the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics bode well for the future. Moving from Devarajan’s statistical tragedy’ to Kiregyera’s statistical ‘renaissance’ will take a continued long-term effort by individual countries and development partners.