Revisiting the Farmer and Farm Household Definitions
Author: Liza N. Comia, Ph. D.
Abstract:
This report provides the output of revisiting the definitions of farm and farm households. Two focus group discussions (FGD) were done to get information from relevant stakeholders. The first FGD was done to get information from survey specialists and generators of statistics, while in the second one, participants were mainly users of statistics. Findings showed that the specialists and generators of statistics find the present definitions satisfactory, suggesting that farmers can be defined based on the user’s need. However, the participants of the second FGD felt that the present definitions are not acceptable, considering the changes in farmer situations. During the discussion, participants mentioned several characteristics, both of “farmer” and “farm household” that they think should be included in the current definition to capture the changes in farmer situation. Recommendations discussed include designing a survey for the sole purpose of generating statistics of farmers and farm households to include characteristics of such; and, redesigning the existing censuses/surveys of to measure these characteristics so that questions regarding "farmers" and "farm households" may be answered satisfactorily, albeit in many ways and depending on need.
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