The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) together with Statistics South Africa will on Tuesday brief the media on the establishment of a Producer\/Farmer Register (PFR).<\/p>\n
The project is expected to run from 2018 to 2021 and is aimed at collecting statistics on commercial and non-commercial farmers.<\/p>\n
StatsSA will collect data on commercial farmers through the Census of Commercial Agriculture (CoCA) and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will collect data on non-commercial farmers through the Producer\/Farmer Register, the department said.<\/p>\n
It added that the establishment of a Producer\/Farmer Register is to improve the inaccurate and misrepresented statistics of farmers in the non-commercial sector – such as smallholder farmers.<\/p>\n
Stats SA officials began visiting farms across the country in October, gathering data on the country\u2019s state of commercial agriculture.<\/p>\n
The exercise –\u00a0which is expected to carry on into 2019 – will see 600 field staff visiting various commercial farms across the country.<\/p>\n
The study will establish the number of farms, the size of farms, crop types being farmed in different geographic areas, and agricultural inputs such as irrigation usage.<\/p>\n