Abstract

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is the United Nations agency responsible for providing methodological guidelines and technical support to member countries to conduct national censuses of agriculture. This support is provided through the decennial World Programme for the Census of Agriculture (WCA). The WCA 2020 round, which will end in 2025, has witnessed developments in the ways countries implement their national censuses, including shifts in census methodologies, sourcing more data from administrative registers, the increasing role of information technology in the collection of field data, and dissemination of census results through interactive online databases, among others. In some instances, Covid-19 accelerated the pace of innovation. These developments will have implications for the new WCA 2030 guidelines, which are under preparation. The paper will present a global overview of the WCA 2020 round and highlight some implications for the WCA 2030 round.