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Dr Esther Bediako, Government Statistician on Wednesday advocated the complete overhaul of the country's agricultural statistic system. She said Ghana needed more and better statistics on agriculture, a major economic sector. Dr Bediako was addressing the 21st Session of African Commission on Agricultural Statistics (AFCAS) Meeting in Accra. The four-day meeting is being attended by experts from 17 African countries, regional and international organisations that have supported agriculture statistics. Dr Bediako said even though about a third of Ghana's Gross Domestic Product was generated from the agricultural sector, it was one of the most difficult areas to obtain accurate and timely data. "As many governments work to increase productivity and output in agriculture, they should ensure that the required systems are instituted to generate the necessary basic information to affect policies, monitoring and evaluation of programme processes and outcomes," she said. Dr Bediako noted that statistics were needed to support planning for the agriculture sector. On production, he said data would facilitate the measurement of supply and estimation of the demand for agricultural produce as well as the gaps, shortfalls and surpluses. She announced that a Ghana Statistic Development Plan had been launched and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture was part of the data producing institutions selected to work on the initial phase. Mr Kwesi Ahwoi, Minister of Food and Agriculture stressed the need for continuous effort by member countries to use efficient modern technology to generate timely and necessary data for the agricultural sector. He said the current method of field measurements and yield studies which required costly field equipment and human resource affected the Ministry's annual budget. The Minister therefore suggested that efforts should be made to ensure cost effective technologies such as the use of remote sensing, aerial photography and the geographical position system. Mr Ahwoi urged them to expand the conventional output and production, and trade data generated to include general agricultural information that would guide not only the formulation of development strategies but to monitor and evaluate the outcomes and impact of the global and regional programmes such as the Millennium Development Goals and the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme. He said to ensure effectiveness and overall productivity in the agricultural sector, Ghana had found it critical and fundamental to build a comprehensive database of farmers, farmer-based organisations, other agricultural producers, traders and processors engaged in the sector, to provide the basis and mechanism to target its policies, interventions and outreach programmes to target beneficiaries. The exercise, he said, was currently on-going and would need additional resources to validate the first generation of data. Mr Ahwoi stressed the need for co-ordination of data collection efforts within member countries and asked the participants to examine the current statistical structure and the way forward to generate the required diversified information and co-ordination among data producers.