NSO presents 2002 census of agriculture and fisheries

The National Statistics Office (NSO) in Region VI recently presented to the media and the major users of data, the 2002 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries (CAF 2002).

The 2002 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries is mandated by Executive Order 352 which requires generation of data for decision-making of government and private sector.

The CAF 2002 is the 5 th census undertaken  on a large-scale, geared toward the collection and compilation of statistics on the nation's agriculture and fisheries sectors.

Antique Provincial Statistics Officer  Zenaida  Israel said that   CAF 2002 presents  the structure and characteristics of land holdings, land utilization and areas planted, as well as the number and distribution of households and enterprises engaged in agriculture and fishing and gather information as to the operation of these households and enterprises.

Generally, Ms. Israel said that CAF 200 is useful for agricultural and fisheries development planners in making meaningful decisions in the utilization of related resources, as basis for making production projections, as well as in measuring the progress in agriculture and fisheries..

The 2002 Census of Agriculture covers the characteristics of the operator, kinds and number of permanent crops and areas planted, kinds and number of equipment, machineries, facilities and farm tools, selected agricultural practices done in the holdings, and demographic characteristics of the operators' household members and their involvement in agricultural activity.

Meanwhile, the Census for fisheries covers Municipal and Commercial Fishing, including Aquaculture.

CAF 2002 involved all households in CA and CF sample barangays numbering 41,945, of which 28.3 % or 11,890 for Agriculture and 31.0% for fisheries.  All agricultural, fishing and aquaculture operators identified during the listing were interviewed.

For Region VI, there were 1,068 sample barangays chosen for CA and 1083 for CF, with 429,456 agricultural farms, 208,079 fishing and 7,679 for aquaculture. The enumeration for CA was in March 2003 while for CF, April 2003.

The 2002 CAF in Western Visayas which was based on farms by residence of operators revealed that there was an increase  by 4.0% in number of agricultural farms registered in 2002 (429,456) from that of 1991 (411,572), but as to farm areas, there was a decrease by 12.0%  resulting to the decline of average farm size from 1.8 hectares per farm to 1.6 hectares per farm.    

The data also revealed that Iloilo province accounted for the highest number of farms with 133,477 covering 186,254 hectares, while it is Negros Occidental which had the biggest farm area, 277,135 hectares, with a current farm area of 14.0% lower than the 1991 estimated to be 320,500 hectares.

Palay and sugar canes remained to be the major temporary crops in the region, with the former accounting for 292,537 farms covering an area of 471,440 hectares.  Sugar cane accounted for 43,933 farms covering 136,077 hectares.

The report showed that bananas and coconuts were the major permanent crops, but notable were the decrease in the number of farms devoted to both compared with the 1991 census.  For bananas, there were 228,691 farms planted with 8.0 million trees, compared with the 346,445 farms and 11,272,791 trees.  For coconut,  221,416 farms were planted with 5.8 million trees as of 2002.

Carabaos, goats and cattles were still the major livestock, while chickens were the major poultry products.

On the other hand, ornamental and flower gardening was a selected type of agricultural activity, which was predominantly practiced in 4,014 farms.

For the 2002 Census of Fisheries, it was noted that the number of municipal fishing operators increased three folds from 582 households in 1991 to 1.483 million, while commercial fishing operators tripled from 2.1 thousand to 7.1 thousand.

The data also showed that majority of the fishing operations were done individually, which comprised 91.1 % of commercial fishing operators.  Likewise, the total number of fishing boats/vessels used almost tripled with a gross tonnage ranging from 3.1 to 5 tons or 27.3 %.