Abstract

A Census of Agriculture (CA) is conducted every ten years in the Philippines. Being a huge undertaking involving millions of pesos in financial resources and thousands of field workers, a CA requires careful and deliberate planning. In view of the problems and issues that had been raised with regard to the 1980 CA, this project determined the appropriate methodology to be adopted for the 1991 CA. The study posed three questions that had bearing on certain design aspects of the 1991 CA: the operationalization of the definition of a holding, frame construction, and questionnaire design. In identifying a holding and its holder, simplicity as depicted by the 1990 World Census of Agriculture definition of a holding should be the overriding concern in formulating an operational definition. There can be a one-phase operation for listing (or construction of frame of holders) and enumeration. The farm parcel approach had distinct advantages over the total farm approach in collecting data on holding characteristics.