Agricultural Module, Piggy-Backed onto the Population and Housing Census (PHC) of Uganda, 2002

The Population and Housing Census (PHC) 2002 was conducted between September 13-20, 2002. It included an Agricultural Module (AM) whose main purpose was to provide appropriate sampling frames for a detailed Census of Agriculture and Livestock and other agricultural surveys. Those sampling frames are already available for users. Due to the nature of the PHC, agricultural statistics from the AM cover only household-based agricultural activity. This means that data from the Private Large-Scale and Institutional Farms are not included since they were not collected.

 

The advantage of the data from the AM is that it was collected on a universal basis (complete enumeration of households). It is possible to disaggregate the data to various levels of administrative units, including the Enumeration Areas (EAs) that are clearly linked to the LC1 administrative areas.

 

The major drawbacks of the AM data are that:

- The AM questionnaire was very brief compared to those designed for conventional agricultural surveys/censuses.

- The available time did not allow exhaustive training of the Enumerators to ensure proper understanding of the agricultural concepts and definitions.

- During fieldwork, supervision was not as thorough as UBOS would have wished due to a wide coverage of the entire country and the associated large number of Enumerators.

- The questions regarding the agricultural activities did not have adequate filters to differentiate between activities within the EA where the household was located and those outside the EA or even outside the district. For example, it was possible for a respondent in an EA in Central Kampala to state that he had 500 heads of cattle, and yet those cattle were physically available in a different district.

 

However, basing on an overall evaluation, it was decided that the data from the AM could be put to a wider use than the initial objective of constructing appropriate sampling frames. The dataset has also been studied to provide some useful results that can be a basis for further research work. This publication therefore presents merely the wider scope of the data to stakeholders and the general public. More detailed data can be provided on request. A total of 3,833,485 households, or 73.9 percent of the 5,186,558 households from the PHC 2002 (Provisional Results), all reported that one or more of their members were engaged in an agricultural activity as of September 2002. These households are in this report hereafter referred to as “households with agricultural activity” or “agricultural households”.

 

The total number of plots planted during the first agricultural season of 2002 was 12,445,458. Of these, 7,050,830 were in pure stand, 5,281,755 in mixed stand, and 122,873 had no stand specification. The total number of cattle reported during the period of enumeration was 6,282,507, of which 533,095 were Exotic/Crossbreed and 5,749,412 Indigenous. The PHC reported a total of 5,168,023 goats, 1,555,431 sheep, and 773,386 pigs. The enumeration recorded 11,030,699 local breed chicken and 1,828,638 exotic/cross breed chicken. This provided a total of 12,859,337. A total of 7,152 households reported to have been engaged in fish farming as of the day of enumeration.