The Silicon Review ^Asia

In order to make sure that the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are met in time, improvements to agricultural data gathering and monitoring is required. This was suggested to the member countries by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), particularly focusing on the world’s biggest region – Asia and the Pacific. Many countries have already improved their systems of gathering statistical data and analyzing it for better planning in livestock, fisheries, forestry and crops.

Chief Statistician of FAO, Pietro Gennari, pointed out towards the significant data gaps in monitoring the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in the Asia-Pacific region. There is a strong connection between achieving these goals and the country’s commitment to measuring the data. A lack of interest on the country’s side will eventually show up in the poor performance of the Sustainable Development Goals. This has led to plans for improving the use of data in Agriculture Statistics. Therefore, the FAO had recently announced a number of new partnerships to produce better agriculture statistics, by helping countries adopt cost effective technologies. For instance, the FAO had launched handbooks and some massive open on-line courses (MOOCs) on the use of data collection using computers, in partnership with Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2019.The FAO is the leading agency of the UN dedicated to agricultural development and providing crop, fisheries and livestock statistics in a cost-effective manner.