Ethiopia is a big country located in the Horn of Africa. Currently, it has a
population of about 67 million and it is predominantly rural (85% of the
population) and depends on subsistence agriculture. The country follows a
federal system of government with 11 federal states known as regional
governments. The states are subdivided into zones and the zones into woredas.
There are 70 zones and 540 woredas in the country. For administrative
purposes, the rural parts of the woreda are subdivided into peasant associations
and the urban parts into urban dwellers associations or kebeles.
Agriculture is the main economic sector which provides the necessary means of
the livelihood for more than 85% of the Ethiopian population. Besides its
contribution as the main income-generating sector for the majority of the rural
population, it also serves as the main source of household food consumption.
The issue of food security has continual national importance in Ethiopia. To
achieve social and political stability, the government has to be able to maintain
food security by issuing an appropriate agricultural policy. In this respect, reliable
agricultural statistics data is one element that enters into this policy process to
formulate, assess and evaluate the policy. Hence, policy formulation and
analysis require large volume of statistical data /information.
The Central Statistical Authority (CSA) is the statistical arm of the Government of
the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. As a result, the CSA has been
conducting Annual Agricultural Sample Surveys since 1980/81 in an effort to
provide data on the country’s agriculture for policy makers and other data users.
However, the resulting data from these surveys could not meet the demand for
extensive needs of the data users, particularly, data on agriculture at lower
administrative level (i.e. woreda level) and in general data on permanent crops,
vegetables, root crops. In order to fill this gap and other pressing needs, there
was a clarion call to conduct agricultural census in Ethiopia.