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Release Date :
Reference Number :
2013-016

The National Statistics Office (NSO) calls on Filipino households and establishments in agriculture and fisheries to support the conduct of the 2012 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries (CAF), a government undertaking that hopes to collect and compile basic information on the agriculture and fishery sectors in the country. The collected data will serve as bases for policy formulation and implementation towards national development.

Census enumerators will visit the households from February to April 2013 and agricultural enterprises from April to May 2013 to gather information on agriculture such as characteristics of operator/hired manager; physical area of the holding; tenurial status; land utilization; irrigation facility; crops planted; and livestock and poultry raised. For aquafarms, the enumerators will ask about the type, location, and size of aquafarm and the species cultured. For fisheries, collected information shall include characteristics of fishing operators, category of fishing operation, tonnage of fishing boats/vessels used, and kind and number of fishing gears. The community module of the 2012 CAF shall likewise hopes to obtain information on agriculture/fisheries facilities and services in the barangay, dominant terrain, and destructive natural calamity in the past five years.

The reference period for the census is January to December 2012. However, data on household membership and inventory of livestock and poultry shall be gathered as of date of visit for households or as of March 31, 2013 for enterprises.

Apart from house-to-house visits and interviews of operators, interviews of key informants such as the Punong Barangay or other barangay officials shall be conducted in each of the 42,000 barangays in the country.

The NSO assured the public that the information given during the census will not be used against them in lawsuits or for other purposes as guaranteed by Section 4 of Commonwealth Act No. 591.

The 2012 CAF is the sixth of a series of decennial census on agriculture and the fifth on fisheries. The last census of agriculture and fisheries was done in 2002.