The IBGE disclosures today the paths traveled by the enumerators during the 2017 Census of Agriculture. The coordinates of the Mobile Collection Devices (DMC) made it possible to trace their paths, which can help either future IBGE field works or institutions and enterprises that need information about mobility in the territory. The devices collected more than 873 million geographic coordinates and recorded approximately 17.8 million kilometers traveled. This is the first time that displacements have been recorded during a census operation in Brazil.

In 2017, the Census of Agriculture collected information ion more than 5 million agricultural establishments all over the country, generating displacements of more than 17.8 million kilometers – which corresponded nearly to 46 times the distance from the moon.

Holding a Mobile Collection Device (DMC), the enumerators recorded the local coordinates of the establishments and stored the coordinates at each time interval during the collection.

The mapping of the enumerators' paths shows the relevant territorial differences that have an impact on the people's mobility in the territory. The method of field tracking made it also possible to register elements of difficult identification through images or other remote sensors (even when hidden by dense forest coverage, for example).

The results are potentially useful for several purposes, mainly for rural and remote areas, which lack recent and large-scale mapping. In those regions, the paths can help  in the new visits of IBGE agents to the field, in the updating of systematic cartographic products or even in missions of governmental bodies, companies or civil society entities that need to analyze displacement in the territory.

Some legal protection measures in some areas can restrain the dissemination. Such is the case of indigenous lands, quilombola territories and the Conservation Units that are dwelled by traditional peoples and communities (national, state and municipal forests, wild-crop reserves and sustainable development reserves), principally concentrated in the area of the Legal Amazon. For these restricted areas, the IBGE resorted to the official files from Funai (indigenous lands and communities); Incra (quilombola areas); Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (Federal Conservation Units); and Ministry of the Environment (State and Municipal Conservation Units).

The paths of the 2017 Census of Agriculture are available for all municipalities in kml to be viewed on Google Earth or on other geographic information systems.