IBGE launches today (12/10/2014), at 4 p.m., at the 42nd National Meeting on Economics, the book “Census gets on the field: IBGE and the history of the agricultural enumerations”. The publication gathers articles which give a broad view of how the agricultural censuses were carried out, addressing both the methodological aspects and the sociohistorical contexts. The Meeting is being held in the Convention Center of the Serhs Grand Hotel, at 6045, Senador Dinarte Mariz Avenue, Vila Costeira, Natal (RN).

Brazil conducted its first agricultural census in 1920. The following censuses were carried out in 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1995-1996 and 2006, and all of them contributed to the evolution of the Brazilian agriculture itself.

The complete publication can be accessed on page ftp://ftp.ibge.gov.br/Censos/o_censo_entra_em_campo.pdf and can also be bought in the virtual shop of IBGE: http://loja.ibge.gov.br/. Another launch of the book will take place tomorrow (12/11/2014), at 3:30 p.m., in the auditorium of the Center for Information Documentation and Dissemination of IBGE (CDDI), located at 706, General Canabarro Street, Maracanã.

“Census gets on the field: IBGE and the history of the agricultural enumerations” was organized by Nelson de Castro Senra, researcher and professor at IBGE, with preface of Charles Curt Mueller, ex-president of IBGE and professor emeritus of the University of Brasília (UnB), and gathers texts of experts inside and outside IBGE.

The articles of the first part of the book (“Before IBGE: a brief historical summary”) tackles the dawn of the statistical activity, with a highlight to the 1920 Census of Agriculture. The second part (“IBGE age: the censuses from the outside”) aims at the external perception of IBGE's work, from the perspective of academic researchers and users of agricultural statistics. The third and last part (“IBGE age: the censuses from the inside”) focuses on the internal perception, approaching the evolution of methods, processes and techniques. The articles were written by Antônio Carlos Simões Florido, Antônio Márcio Buainain, Caio Galvão de França, Eliana Teles Bastos, Eliseu Alves, Elisio Contini, Flávio Bolliger, Guilherme Costa Delgado, Hildo Meirelles de Sousa Filho, Ivete Oliveira Rodrigues, José Garcia Gasques, Licia Rubinstein, Marcos Zurita Fernandes, Maria Alice de Gusmão Veloso, Maria Vilma Salles Garcia, Mauro Eduardo Del Grossi, Nelson de Castro Senra, Otavio Valentim Balsadi, Paulo Ricardo de Brito Soares, Renato S. Maluf, Rodolfo Hoffmann and Vicente P. M. de Azevedo Marques.

The publication also brings an appendix, produced by Marco Aurélio Martins Santos, with the profiles of important personalities in the history of IBGE and it comes with an enclosed DVD with complementary information.