Uruguayan delegation joins Census of Agriculture in southernmost reaches of Brazil
October 25, 2017 09h00 AM | Last Updated: October 27, 2017 03h26 PM
The municipality of Sant’Ana do Livramento/RS, at the border of Brazil and Uruguay, was chosen to hold the meeting between the IBGE and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing of Uruguay, where all the details about the 2017 Census of Agriculture were presented.
The Uruguayan Delegates are the director of Statistics of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing, Laura Piedrabuena, and the technicians Pablo Couto and Leonardo Aranare. The delegation was welcomed by the technical manager of the Census of Agriculture, Antônio Florido, and by the technical manager of the survey in Rio Grande do Sul, Cláudio Sant’Anna, as well as by representatives of the local branch.
Antônio Florido, in the middle, presents the Census of Agriculture to Representatives of the Uruguayan Government
Antônio Florido and Cláudio Sant’Anna presented to the Uruguayan delegation all the preparation structure for the Census, as well as the questionnaire, how to use the mobile collection device (DMC) and how to supervise the works.
Sant’Ana do Livramento was not chosen by chance. It lies on the border of both countries and is practically equidistant to Montevidéu and Porto Alegre (nearly 500km); in addition, the area of the pampas in Rio Grande do Sul resembles the rural reality of Uruguay.
The foreign delegation joined the routine of one of the almost 19 thousand enumerators of the survey, on Monday (23), which was the first day of the operation that goes up to Friday (27).
The Delegation chief, Laura Piedrabuena, was quite impressed by the computer-based collection. Uruguay, in its last Census of Agriculture, in 2011, still used paper questionnaires. “We have never carried out a computerized collection as Brazil does. It is something we’d like to implement. Therefore, learning the system and watching it being carried out in a region similar to ours is important”, explained the Uruguayan. For her, the use of DMCs represents a great advance.
The Uruguayan Minister of Agriculture and Fishing is responsible for the agricultural statistical information of the country and, each ten years, the Census of Agriculture is carried out. The next survey is set for 2021. Uruguay estimates 45 thousand agricultural establishments, quite below the more than 5 million enumerated in Brazil in 2006.
Florido highlighted the importance of meetings such as this one: “It is relevant for the IBGE to receive those foreign delegations, for it strengthens and gives visibility to our work”. In an attempt to improve the integration with statistical agencies throughout Latin-America, Brazil must receive the visit of 13 countries during the Census, as Florido points out.
The Uruguayan delegation watched the work of Marcirio Leite, an enumerator who goes along a road that quite often crosses the border between the two countries. The work is hard in the municipality: the establishments are very far from each other, and the landscape is defined by the livestock farming in the southern pampas. As a whole, in 2006, 2,614 local properties were visited.
The coverage areas of the Agency of Sant’Ana do Livramento also include the municipalities of Cacequi, Dom Pedrito, Rosário do Sul, Santa Margarida do Sul and São Gabriel, in the southernmost of the country.
Text and photos: José Luiz Zasso, from Rio Grande do Sul
