Abstract

The 2013 Agricultural Census aims to provide basic information on the structure of agriculture at administrative units and that information over ten years provides as a guideline for developing agricultural policies and plans as well as monitoring agricultural development for both national and local levels.

Geographic coverage

National coverage, the census covered all agricultural holdings, who engaged in cultivating crops, rearing livestock, freshwater culture and sea salt farm, whether in municipal or in non-municipal area, throughout the country.

Analysis unit

Agricultural holding/holder

Kind of data

Census/enumeration data [cen]

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Cleaning operations

As the data was collected using Tablet, the initial data quality check was done during the fieldwork. The data was sent to the Server for further process on the inspection of data consistency, data accuracy and coverage completion in detail of each household by the fieldwork supervisors. After that the fieldwork supervisors submitted the correctness of the data to the statistical authorities at the provincial statistical office. The final checking for the correctness and completeness of the census data of each province was then confirmed and sent to the Server, and the data was further processed for statistics tabulations and summarized for reporting the census result at provincial level, regional level and the whole kingdom.

Abstract

The Thailand Agricultural Census had been earlier conducted five times: 1950, 1963, 1978, 1993 and 2003. The census aims to provide basic information on the fundamental structure of agriculture which will constitute the bases for which policymakers and planners will continuously formulate plans for development, monitoring, and evaluation related to agriculture. Under the Statistics Act 2007, the National Statistical Office (NSO) is mandated to carry out censuses of the country. The 2013 Agricultural Census was also undertaken in accordance with the recommendation of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) for conducting agricultural census every 10 years. This census round had extended the scope of agricultural activity to include sea salt farm, as according to the Cabinet approval (1st March 2011), as well as to include questions on marine fishery and coastal aquaculture into the enumeration form.

Census objectives:

1) To collect basic information on the fundamental structure of agriculture, such as number of agricultural holdings and agricultural holding, freshwater aquaculture, sea salt farm, utilization of land, land tenure status, area under crops/sea salt farm/freshwater aquaculture, number of livestock, use of fertilizer, use of agricultural machinery, manpower involved in agricultural activities, etc.,

2) To provide those information at administrative units (village) for developing policy and plans in both national and sub-national level

3) To provide the basis for sampling frame for other surveys undertakings related to agriculture marine fishery and coastal aquaculture

4) To determine changes of basic information on agricultural structure over the past 10 years

Geographic coverage

National coverage

Analysis unit

Households

Universe

The statistical (enumeration) unit was the agricultural holding, defined as an economic unit of agricultural production (cultivating crops, rearing livestock) and aquaculture production, under single management, comprising all livestock kept and all land used wholly or partly for agricultural production purposes, performing an agricultural activity on owned agricultural land, or on land owned by other persons, or on public land, regardless of legal permission. The holding's land could consist of one or more parcels, located in one or more separate areas; however, the land had to be in the same province.

Kind of data

Census/enumeration data [cen]

Sampling procedure

A systematic sampling method was applied to draw the sample of agricultural holders from each EA. The sampling fraction in each EA was 1 in 4 (the sample comprised 25 percent of the total number of holdings). The selected agricultural holders were enumerated using the entire questionnaire.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire for the Agricultural Census, 2013 in Thailand collected information on agricultural activity and legal status of household; holding area by land use; livestock production; rice production; rubber production; permanent crop and forest; vegetable crop, herb, flower and ornamental plants; field crop; seasalt farming; fresh water culture; machinery, vehicle and agricultural equipment; fertilizer and pesticide; employment of agricultural labour; charactersitics of holder and household members; education and agricultural group membership of household holder; agricultural income and debt.

The questionnaire is attached as additional resource in the documentations tab.

Cleaning operations

1. Data processing:

After the data collection stage, during which the census information was collected using electronic devices (tablets), and after initial checking during the fieldwork, the data were sent to the NSO server for further processing, to verify data consistency, accuracy and coverage. After final checking for correctness and completeness, the census data were further processed for statistics tabulations and summarized to report the census results at provincial, regional and country level.

1. Data quality checks

After the completion of census field work, NSO has carried out the Post Enumeration Survey (PES) in order to evaluate the quality of census data. The PES was conducted for all households of the selected enumeration areas throughout the country. The Stratified Single-Stage Sampling was applied to this PES. That is, there were four stratums referring to four regions – Central, North, Northeast and South and provinces in each region were represented as sub-stratum. Within each sub-stratum, the enumeration areas were systematically selected; the total samples were 1,280 enumeration areas. After the PES field operation, information between the census and the PES were processed for matching check. And then the process for investigation was to analyse and evaluate errors of the census coverage and the census content, for example the information on the agricultural activity engagement such as livestock, growing rice, planting para rubber, planting permanent crops and planting field crops, etc.