COLOMBO, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Enumerators equipped with some 16,000 tablet computers will fan out across Sri Lanka to record the country's agricultural activity, as the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) drops paper forms in favor of a fully digital survey, DCS Director General K.M.D.S.D. Karunaratne told reporters on Wednesday.
Data will be gathered at the level of the Grama Niladhari Division, Sri Lanka's smallest administrative unit, and will take in everything from crops and livestock to irrigation sources, disaster impacts, farm infrastructure and processing centers.
Beyond commercial farmland, the survey will reach smallholders and large estates alike, as well as landowners, home gardeners and practitioners of smart agriculture.
The resulting database is intended to underpin future planning and policy in the farm sector. Asked whether ministries and state agencies would have access to the findings, Karunaratne said the information would be passed on to the relevant authorities.
She called on households and farmers to cooperate with enumerators and give accurate, current information, stressing that the quality of the data would shape economic decisions in the years ahead. ■
