Russian Agriculture Census to be Held Soon

The RF Statistics Committee is to conduct an agricultural census for the first time over the past 80 years
The RF Statistics Committee is to conduct an agricultural census for the first time over the past 80 years, Statistics Committee First Deputy Chairman Konstantin Laikam told ITAR-TASS on Monday.

An experimental census is expected in August 2004 and will cost 44 million rubles of budgetary finance. Konstantin Laikam says that the census will cover farms in four regions of Russia: the Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Saratov and Penza Regions. Two districts in each of the regions will be in the focus of the census.

Main objective of the forthcoming agricultural census is to collect actual information about the present-day state of things in large farms, collective farms and private farms after beginning of agricultural reforming. Census agents will pay particular attention to employment in the country, the quality of crops grown there, the livestock of cattle and poultry and spending on farm keeping.

It is expected that total inventory of Russia's agriculture will be taken in two years, in 2006.

Last agricultural census was conducted in 1920. Only single-purpose censuses were conducted in the Soviet epoch to take stock of areas under crop, vineyards and fruit plantations. Results of the agricultural census will be taken into consideration while development of the federal agricultural policy and making a complete database on the state of things in agriculture, a significant parameter for the country’s economic safety.

According to the recent all-Russia population census, about 18 million Russians subsist on their private farms.