A group formed by the representatives of the Institution, by the representatives of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers of the municipality and by representatives of institutions of the civil society will participate in the activities of the Agriculture Census and Population Counting, which will occur in 2007, guaranteeing the quality of the information collected.  During this year similar commissions will be formed in all the 5.564 Brazilian cities.

The Municipal Censuses Committees (CCMs) function as a channel of communication between the IBGE and the representatives of the society and will participate in all the processes of the Agriculture Census and Population Counting in the next year.

In the stage of fieldwork formation, these committees are important, as for example, in the cession of locations and infrastructure for the installation of collecting centers; in the revision of maps and registers which support the data collection; in the clearing of doubts regarding the inter municipal boundaries and the correct positioning of rural localities and properties, among other activities.

The Municipal Census Committees are an important part of the ongoing process of data collection and are also important for the solution of problems and for the identification of eventual omissions of households and establishments.  They can help, for example, in the divulgation of operations and approximation of the population to answer correctly the questions of the census taker and in the providing of transportation for the field team.

In the end of the field surveys, the provisional results of the two surveys are presented to the members of the Commissions, which will have the opportunity to analyze the quality of the territorial coverage and, if necessary, provide verifications.

Each CCM must have at least five members: one representative of IBGE, which presides it, representatives of the municipal executive, legislative and judicial institutions in which it was installed and representatives of the local civil organizations.  In the case of Maringá, for example, representatives of the State University of Maringá, of the Agro-industrial Cooperative, of the Rural Society and of the Municipal Rural Workers Labor Union, among others integrate the commission.

Census and counting will go to field in April 16, 2007

In April 16, 2007, a total of 90 thousand persons – among servants of IBGE and temporary workers – will begin the data collection for the Agriculture Census, in the 5,564 municipalities of the country, and for the Population Counting, which will be done in the municipalities with up to 170 thousand inhabitants – 5,514 in the total.  The cost of the combined operation is estimated in R$ 538 millions.

The 10th Agriculture Census will collect information in the 5.7 million Brazilian agriculture establishments.  It will show changes which occurred in the sector since the last census which occurred in  1996, such as the results of the macroeconomic policies (consolidation of the gains of the Real Plan) and of some governmental programs (Program of Strengthening of Family Agriculture - Pronaf - and Agrarian Reform Program); the effective occupation of areas of the agriculture frontier (Mato Grosso, Rondônia and Pará), the combination of agro-ecological methods and modern methods of planting in fragile areas regarding socio-environmental characteristics, gains of productivity and more recent valuation of some cultures, among others.

Special areas – remnants of quilombos, resettlements of storage dams, rural workers settlements, indigenous lands and environmental reserves – will be presented in the Agriculture Census with special analysis as part of the release of census data.  Another novelty will be the form of aggregation of data by geographic units.  Besides publishing the information for each census sector, IBGE will publish the results of the 10th Agriculture Census according to the geographic levels representative of the several biomas and hydrographic basins in the country.

The updated information about economic, social and environmental characteristics of the agriculture activity are important for the elaboration and following up of public policies; for the better allocation of resources, in the federal as well as state and municipal governments; and as an input for the planning directed to the inclusion of population and regions regarding a sustainable and integrated development for the agriculture activity of the country.

The collection of the data of the 10th Agriculture Census will take place in August 2007, and the first releases will be published in the same year.

The Population Counting will provide updated data for the distribution of the Participation Fund of Municipalities (FPM), which is calculated from the population prospects and estimates which the IBGE publishes annually since 1989.  For this calculation, the Institute uses techniques which consider the population growing trends in the period between the Demographic Censuses (carried out every ten years) and the factors which form its demographic dynamic (births/deaths and migrations). The Population Counting is necessary to guarantee the improvement of the quality and precision of these estimates.

The population estimates and projections are also useful for the data bases of municipal and state ministries and departments of the social area and for the formulation and implementation of public policies. They are also an important instrument to help for example the national campaigns for vaccination, the evaluation of the school registration, and are also considerably useful for the planning of the supply of services to children, teenagers, youth, active age population and elders.  Also, they provide inputs for the obtaining of the complete mortality table which the IBGE publishes each year and that is used in the calculation of the welfare security factor.

Considering the expected budget, it is not possible to count the population of all the 5.564 Brazilian municipalities in 2007. Considering that the annual distribution of the FPM depends on the updating of the municipal populations, IBGE chose then to count the population (rural and urban) of the municipalities with less than 170 thousand inhabitants.  This approach corresponds to the lower limit of the last group of population which determinates the coefficients of distribution of the FPM (156,217 inhabitants), with a security margin. For the cities with more than 156,217 inhabitants, the coefficient used for the distribution of the fund resources is fixed, which means it is not important how many inhabitants they have, the coefficient will always be the same.

In 2010, the Demographic Census will update the population of all the 5,564 Brazilian municipalities.

Hand computers instead of paper

In the Agricultural Census and in the Population Counting of 2007, the traditional paper questionnaire will be substituted by the hand computer or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

The innovation will bring several advantages: the instantaneous evaluation, in the moment the data are being typed, allowing eventual corrections in the moment of the interview; the fulfillment of all the obligatory items  not allowing the non answer by forgetfulness or error of the census taker; the fulfillment of the data with automatic leaps in the form not needing to go through items where there is not eventually information and optimizing time, the immediate updating of the register of Addresses; the transmission of data during the period of data collecting, allowing the analysis of information; and eliminating the step of data entrance of the paper questionnaires which will represent gains of quality and time in the releasing of the results.