China promotes world's biggest agricultural census

China on Saturday launched a month-long promotional campaign for its second agricultural census, the world's largest.

China on Saturday launched a month-long promotional campaign for its second agricultural census, the world's largest, which will help formulate farmer-friendly policies for the government.

The census will provide a foundation for improving the country's rural policies, head of National Bureau of Statistics Xie Fuzhan said at the inaugural ceremony in Beijing.

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The nationwide census will be conducted between January and April next year, covering more than 200 million rural households and employing over seven million investigators.

Information will be collected mainly through on-the-spot inquiries about agricultural production, employment, migration, environmental conditions, use of land, fixed-asset investment and quality of life in rural areas.

The promotion campaign is designed to make people understand the significance of the census and cooperate with the investigators, Xie was quoted as saying by a private news agency.

China carried out the first agricultural census in 1996.

Since then, the government has adopted a series of policies to protect farmers' interests, including abolishing agricultural taxes, providing subsidies and setting a minimum price for grains and a maximum price for fertilisers.

Official data show the per capita income of Chinese farmers in the first nine months of the current fiscal reached USD 345, up 11.4 per cent year on year.