Last Wednesday (02/28), the IBGE completed 93.6% of the collection, first stage of the operations of the 11th Census of Agriculture of Brazil, the 10th conducted by the IBGE. By that date, data from 4,918,593 agricultural establishments of the 5,252,354 initially estimated by the Institute had been collected. For the president of the institute, Roberto Luis Olinto Ramos, the IBGE achieved its goal, since the almost 19,000 census takers involved in the census operation visited 7.2 million addresses, almost two million more than expected, to identify wether the properties existed or not.

Such a difference occurs because the property register is updated as census takers go visiting the addresses in the country: they exclude those that do not fit in the definition of agricultural establishments and include others that were identified during the collection. "Our initial goal was achieved. So much so that the dissemination schedule remains unchanged for the month of July", emphasizes the president.

Collection goes on in rain-affected areas and in hard-to-reach places

Olinto clarifies that it is not yet possible to state whether there was a significant change in the number of establishments in comparison with the 2006 Census of Agriculture. "We are now going through a fine-tuning phase, with the data collected being counted and edited. Moreover, the collection is still on in some regions, especially those where weather has affected its progress and in areas of difficult access - which was already expected by IBGE," he explains.

Data editing is a statistical procedure through which it is possible to assess coherence in the information collected, attenuating, therefore, the chances of error. In some cases, it is necessary to return to the agricultural establishment and reapply the questionnaire.

According to the manager of the Agricultural Census, Antônio Florido, the Federation Units most affected by climatic factors were  Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Goiás, Acre, and others to a lesser extent, where summer rains made it difficult to get to some establishments.

Moreover, there are Indian lands, whose visits are mediated by the National Indian Foundation (Funai).

"We had already anticipated that we could extend the collection phase after the end of February, due to possible climatic factors. We worked during the rainy season in a great part of Brazil and, besides these complications for field work, we still had areas that are known to be more difficult ", concludes Florido.

IBGE will disseminate first results of Census of Agriculture in July 2018

The dissemination of the first results of the Census of Agriculture is set to July 2018 and will show the profile of the rural producer by sex, age, color or race, literacy and schooling, land use, livestock inventory, animal and vegetal production, way of land acquisition, agricultural methods used in the establishment, among others.