NASC is an exercise designed to fill the existing data gap in the agricultural landscape in Nigeria. It is a comprehensive enumeration of all agricultural activities in the country, including crop production, fisheries, forestry, and livestock activities. The implementation of NASC was done in two phases, the first being the Listing Phase, and the second is the Sample Survey Phase. Under the first phase, enumerators visited all the selected Enumeration Areas (EAs) across the Local Government Areas (LGAs) and listed all the farming households in the selected enumeration areas and collected the required information. The scope of information collected under this phase includes demographic details of the holders, type of agricultural activity (crop production, fishery, poultry, or livestock), the type of produce or product (for example: rice, maize, sorghum, chicken, or cow), and the details of the contact persons. The listing exercise was conducted concurrently with the administration of a Community Questionnaire, to gather information about the general views of the communities on the agricultural and non-agricultural activities through focus group discussions.
The main objective of the listing exercise is to collect information on agricultural activities at household level in order to provide a comprehensive frame for agricultural surveys. The main objective of the community questionnaire is to obtain information about the perceptions of the community members on the agricultural and non-agricultural activities in the community.
Additional objectives of the overall NASC program include the following:
· To provide data to help the government at different levels in formulating policies on agriculture aimed at attaining food security and poverty alleviation
· To provide data for the proposed Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rebasing