Statistics, Agricultural

the branch of economic statistics that deals with agriculture and, as such, is an important tool for state management and planned guidance of socialist agricultural enterprises.

The principal tasks involved in agricultural statistics are the collection, processing, and analysis of statistical data that characterize the current status and development of agriculture and the fulfillment of production plans. Such data are used to draw up yearly and long-range plans for agricultural production. The sources of information employed in agricultural statistics are censuses, sample surveys, and the periodic and annual reports submitted by kolkhozes, sovkhozes, and other state and cooperative agricultural enterprises, reports based on the data obtained from basic bookkeeping procedures and production accounting at such farms.

A system of leading indexes is used in agricultural statistics. These indexes include land area and the extent of agricultural land, the composition and distribution of such land in terms of use, and the land area sown and in varietal plantings. Others are the gross harvest and yield of agricultural crops, the number and productivity of agricultural animals, the output of animal products, and gross, commercial, and net agricultural output. Statistics on the labor force include indexes of the number and employment of the labor force, labor remuneration, and labor productivity. Other indexes show the size and structure of the fixed capital stock, the capital-labor ratio, the energy-labor ratio, prime cost of production, and the profitability of individual products and the economy as a whole. Productivity, the capital-labor ratio, the energy-labor ratio, the prime cost, and other indexes are studied only for agriculture in the public sector.

In the USSR, collections of agricultural statistics are published annually in the National Economy of the USSR and periodically in Agriculture. In the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), agricultural statistics have increasingly reflected the common methodological principles developed by the COMECON Standing Commission for Statistics. Since 1972, agricultural statistics for the individual COMECON countries have been published in a special section of the Statistical Yearbook of the COMECON Countries.

In the capitalist countries, national agricultural statistics are published in statistical collections, yearbooks, and special journals, all of which provide information on various topics, such as the extent of sown area, the production and yield of agricultural crops, the number of livestock and livestock productivity, the use of mineral fertilizers, the mechanization of agriculture, the prices of agricultural products, land prices, and the volume and structure of production costs. Bourgeois agricultural statistics do not generally classify farms in terms of socioeconomic characteristics; rather, the statistical categories they employ—for example, the land area of farms—seek to conceal the true position oí the small producer in capitalist agriculture. Agricultural statistics for all countries are given in the annual and monthly reference works published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.