The Census of Agriculture and Fisheries (CAF) gathers data on structures and characteristics of farms such as size, tenure of holdings, land use, areas planted to crops, production and number of livestock and poultry, and distribution and number of households engaged in farming, fishing and related activities. Globally, the methodology in the conduct of censuses on agriculture integrates new technologies which results to a high cost in census operations. Given the constraints in resources available for government services in the Philippines, the CAF is being undertaken on a sample basis, wherein the census is separately conducted within a year. With this approach, demands for critical data on agriculture are not being addressed due to methodological problems that are being encountered in the conduct of the census. In consideration of that, this study provides a comprehensive research on the advantages and disadvantages of using sampling in conducting a census, with the aim to yield an alternative sampling design that will provide estimates that are more accurate, reliable and cost-efficient. Furthermore, this study assessed the possible adoption of the recommendations of the World Program for the Census of Agriculture 2010 (WCA 2010) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The WCA proposes to undertake agricultural census in modules, rather than as a single operation. This study focused only on the Census of Agriculture since the evaluation of the Census of Fisheries needs to be undertaken separately as there is a need for distinct sampling design to take account of the difference in sampling and observational units, i.e., between barangays and fishing grounds.

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