Abstract
Data on agriculture are required by decision-makers, including farmers, to solve problems and make business decisions. The needs of decision-makers have changed over time. Since information systems are designed to aid decisionmakers, their needs should be determined. A mail survey among farmers indicated that they are chiefly interested in information regarding producer prices, prices of field crop inputs and statistics on imports and exports of livestock products. There is also interest in employment data and statistics on economic, institutional and infrastructural matters.
Highlights
It is generally accepted that farmers, like all other business people, become increasingly dependent on data and information for the functioning of their businesses in a globalising, increasingly information based economy and society
These data are constructed by means of statistical measures that are operationally meaningful through various levels of aggregation, valuation, basic units or counts and weighting schemes that are determined against a theoretical background and with some analytical aim in mind
For some products like grain and oilseeds, cotton, deciduous, citrus, dried and canned fruit, lucerne, wool, mohair, milk and meat, alternative organisations were established under the Marketing of Agriculture Products Act of 1996 to continue with the collection of agricultural data (National Agricultural Marketing Council, 1998)
Summary
It is generally accepted that farmers, like all other business people, become increasingly dependent on data and information for the functioning of their businesses in a globalising, increasingly information based economy and society. This is true, irrespective of whether information or data is needed for long-, medium- or short-term decision-making. Governments have accumulated data and processed information, both for purposes of their own policy formation and for informing entrepreneurs about the nature of their environment This has been done with respect to all economic sectors, including agriculture. Need for accurate and valid data, there is a lack of documented evidence on the actual requirements of those who need agricultural data (Barnard, 1979: 74; Russel, 1983: 40)
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