Closing the data gap in agriculture through sustainable investment in the data value chain: Realizing the vision of the 50x2030 Initiative

The articles in this Special Section

The Section starts with an overview of the Initiative authored by members of its Program Management Team, the unit based at the World Bank that coordinates implementation and leads the engagement with countries, donors and other stakeholders including in the private sector. The paper by Villarino et al. (From agricultural statistics to zero hunger: How the 50x2030 Initiative is closing data gaps for SDG2 and beyond) presents the vision of the Initiative and its implementation principles, and discusses how its different components work together to implement that vision, and outlines some of the early impacts in selected countries where the Initiative has started operating. The paper sets the stage for the rest of the Special Section.

The other six papers in the Section focus on a diverse set of contributions the Initiative is making to strengthen agricultural data systems in participating countries. That includes addressing priority data needs, promoting innovative sampling approaches to facilitate data integration, developing and testing methods for producing quality data for important policy variables, working with national statistical offices to enhance the synergies across different survey programs, to diagnosing and encouraging opportunities for greater data use and impact.

The paper by Bolliger et al. (The 50x2030 Initiative and production of SDG 2 indicators: Country challenges and experiences) shows the potential for 50x2030 to help fill the gaps in the production of SDG2 indicators,55 in many ways the paramount indicators for agriculture. The paper shows how 50x2030 built on the efforts of previous initiatives, namely the AGRISurvey program at FAO, to scale up innovations developed under previous programs to achieve sustainable impact. The paper also highlights some key challenges (including outstanding ones) that countries are facing at different stages from data collection to indicator computation and how the Initiative is working with countries to address those challenges.

An adequate sampling approach is of course a prerequisite for any successful survey operation. Bako et al. (Integrated sampling design for agricultural and socio-economic households’ surveys: A cost-effective approach for agricultural and rural statistics) present the 50x2030 approach to sampling, with particular respect to how to effectively integrate data collection operations that are normally carried out in parallel for agricultural production and for household surveys. In some countries it might be possible to pursue cost efficiencies while enhancing data interoperability via a purposely designed sampling approach. The paper presents the concepts and the theory behind the proposed approach, and how this is being implemented in practice by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS). This experience is somewhat paradigmatic of the 50x2030 philosophy in that methodological advances are developed in close collaboration with survey operations, in order to enhance data usability and impact. The program attempts to push the frontier, while also translating any advances into practical knowledge as well as in knowledge public goods that can inform other countries and survey operations that are working towards similar goals.

The papers by Brunelli and Gourlay (Individual land rights – Filling data gaps with the 50x2030 Initiative) and by Rühl et al. (Combining farm and household surveys with modelling approaches to improve post-harvest loss estimates and reduce data collection costs) are moved by a very similar motivation, in that they show how 50x2030 is combining the attention to methodological development with survey practice to promote the adoption of scalable methods for the production of data for the monitoring of SDGs. In particular the two papers focus on SDG indictor 5.a.1 on security of land tenure (Brunelli and Gourlay) and 12.3.1.a on reducing food losses (Rühl et al.). The former paper is an example of how the Initiative works to incorporate recent methodological developments that predate the Initiative in the survey instruments adopted and promoted by the Initiative so that these innovations can make a difference at scale, and become an integral part of the recurrent survey practice of national statistical systems. The paper by Rühl et al. shows how the Initiative is also working to further previous methodological work by conducting more validation and further contributing to survey methods advances while keeping in mind the constraints low-resourced national statistical systems are operating in. These are just two examples of a much broader methodological agenda 50x2030 is contributing to and that is being developed in consultation with partners in the global statistical community, from NSOs, multilateral agencies, data users and academia.

The paper by Ponzini et al. (The integration of socioeconomic and agricultural surveys in the national statistical system: Th case of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics) weaves together many of the above threads as it recounts how the 50x2030 program is making strides in Uganda, where it is pioneering an innovative approach to integrating pre-existing multi-topic and agricultural sample surveys which had been for a few years receiving support respectively from the LSMS-ISA and the AGRISurvey program. The article relates the progress made with that integration at different levels, from integrating part of the sample, adopting similar methods for data collection, to overcoming institutional barriers both within different parts of the national statistical system, as well as across external organizations that are now coordinating much more closely their support to UBOS. Importantly, the paper shows how Uganda is reaping the benefits of the approach in terms of cost effectiveness of the operations, as well as by being able to avoid a situation in which different surveys would be producing different estimates that needed to be reconciled ex post, thus providing a service to both the taxpayers and data users.

The final paper in the Section by Winters et al. (Facilitating data use for decisionmaking: 50x2030’s approach) describes how the Initiative is integrating concerns about promoting data use from the onset, whereas these have often been an afterthought in national and international programs focusing on the design of surveys or of other data collection operations. The paper describes the approach the Initiative is taking in countries to map the data ecosystem, to strategically target interventions to maximize data use and impact by identifying and mobilizing data users early in the process, and presents results and outstanding challenges from the first countries in which the approach is being used.

We trust the SJIAOS readership will find this set of papers of interest in several ways. First, they provide a glimpse into the working of an ambitious initiative that is aiming to transform the agricultural data landscape across low- and lower-middle income countries, which are those where agriculture is generally more important for the economy at large and for the livelihoods of the poor in particular, and where technical and financial support needs for statistical operations the greatest and most urgent [5]. Second, the papers present important insights in their own right, which are of interest for survey practitioners beyond the countries that are participating in the Initiative. The innovations in sampling, data collection and modelling, data use mapping, and integration across national survey programs that are discussed in the Section are of general relevance for official statisticians and others involved in designing or implementing agricultural and rural surveys. Last but not least, with publishing this Section we aim to stimulate a discussion around the 50x2030 Initiative and its approach to technical and financial assistance and to data production, the innovative methodological agenda it is pursuing, and its systematic efforts to promote data use for impact. We hope the Section will motivate readers to get involved with the Initiative and help it achieve its goal of transforming agricultural data-informed policy in low- and lower-middle income countries, whether it is by engaging directly with the Initiative as producers or users of statistics, or by contributing to an intellectual debate that can nurture the innovative nature and relevance of an initiative that aims to produce tangible change and contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Agenda through more and better data.