74. The organizer of this session was Mr. M. Ward, formerly of the Development Data Group of the World Bank; and the discussant was Mr. M. Gorgoni, Member of the Italy/FAO Technical Review and Monitoring Panel.

 

75. Three papers were presented:

(i)“The Use of the Agricultural Census in China for Targeting Poverty Alleviation and Economic Programs” (D. Bigman and Jikun Huang);

(ii)“Using Agricultural Census Data for the Assessment of Food Security Vulnerability” (B. Davis);

(iii)“Assessment of the Food Security in China” (Zhu Ze).

 

76. This session looked at how access to food impacts on household poverty status, and how poor households could be identified and targeted using the Census of Agriculture results in combination with the Household Income and Expenditure Survey. These links could also be extended to other household related databases, including the Census of Population, to determine the vulnerability of households to food insecurity and poverty.

 

77. It was shown that, because the benefits of non-targeted programs of poverty alleviation tended to accrue mostly to the non-poor, policies needed to be revised to ensure better coverage of poor households. The information provided by the Census of Agriculture will give the government the capacity to implement effective targeted programs. It was noted that an effective way to achieve this was to use the data to determine a detailed geographical mapping of “eligibility” for poverty support, that identifies those households most at risk. Geographical mapping of eligible households represents a good criterion for targeting and provides a basis to monitor and administer policies that minimize the scope of errors of “inclusion” (leading to higher costs) and “exclusion” (lowering effectiveness).

 

78. The approach outlined uses statistical matching of the target areas in the different data sources and applies these linking procedures to identify the geographical areas - districts or villages and townships - in which the majority of the households have similar food security and poverty characteristics.  Using econometric methods, the approach extrapolates the data of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey, which are available only for a sample of districts, to all rural districts based on the Census of Agriculture.  This technique can then be used to rank and prioritize poverty alleviation and food security programs, based on their impact on the target population.

 

79. The session also took a more macro overview of food grain production capacity and grain reserve levels and their fluctuation within the context of strengthening the efficiency of existing systems to increase national food security. These issues were viewed against the traditional background strategic assumptions of minimal external food dependency and the need for sufficient “buffer” stocks to counter unexpected contingencies.

 

80. The discussion focused on the difficulty in doing this kind of assessment, and it was noted that, in any case, it would be necessary to have more detailed data. The session concluded with an expression of desire to increase joint participation, encourage the release of more micro data (confidentiality considerations permitting), and strengthen the use of research for policy analysis in PRC.