Agricultural Census 2009

Data collection focuses on the private households only. Institutional households such as hotels and boarding schools were not included. This with other factors accounts for the low household and population count. Furthermore, data collected to estimate single crop equivalent area were collected on a 25% sample of agricultural active households. Because only a sample on the agricultural households were included, this includes sampling errors.

A pretest of the tentative questionnaires was done by the staff of the Department of Statistics on 4th and 5th August 2009. Thereafter a Pilot Census was carried out in two villages, namely Solosolo and Tuanai in Upolu. The results of the pretest and pilot census were used in finalizing the questionnaires. The pilot census assisted the census staff to work out proper time schedule for the field work, helped them to clearly understand the concepts and definitions and also exposed them to some of the field problems. The pilot survey also proved very useful in preparing the training materials and in finalizing the tabulation programme of the Census.

Data Users/Producers Workshop
A two day workshop of data users and producers was held on 29-30 July 2009, where the scope of the Census and the questionnaires were discussed. It was a most interesting workshop and provided an opportunity for the interaction of data users and producers.

Organization of Census Field Work and Recruitment of Enumerators
The preparation of updated household list very much facilitated the demarcation of enumeration areas. Full time enumerators were recruited from the open market for field work. The job of recruitment of enumerators was left to the Agriculture Extension officers who acted as supervisors for the Census field work. In all 300
enumerators were recruited. The Agricultural officers and senior officers of the Bureau of Statistics acted as supervisors.

Publicity
The main purpose of the census publicity is to ensure cooperation of the holders to provide requisite data Samoa being a small country word spreads through quickly. During the training period and field enumeration there were spot advertisements on the T.V and Radio twice daily and these became very popular. In view of this, when the enumerators approached the households, they did not encounter any problems as the households were fully aware the census programme.

Training
One of the objectives of the project was to train the national staff on all aspects of agriculture census procedures including data collection, processing analysis, retrieval and dissemination. Extensive training programmes were organized at various levels to achieve this objective. It was a three stage training programme.
The first stage was for the Supervisors from the Bureau of Statistics. About 20 officials participated in this three day training programme held on 18-20 August 2009. Training materials prepared included questionnaires and manuals and slides on the objectives of the census, scope, coverage, concepts and definitions. The Trainees in the programme were utilized as enumerators in the pretest. The second stage training was for Bureau of Statistics and Agriculture Officers who acted as supervisors. This was done separately for Upolu and Savaii on1-2 October 2009 respectively. The training of supervisors was entirely handled by the National Project Coordinator. The third stage training was enumerators. Two 2-day Training were conducted for the Apia Urban Area and Rest of Upolu regions. Three and four 2-day training were conducted for the North West and Savaii regions respectively. This was done by three training teams lead by senior officers of the Bureau.
One officer of the Bureau attended a two week attachment at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Noumea to familiarize herself with the data processing aspect of the census.