The 8^th International Conference on Agricultural Statistics (ICAS-VIII) will be organized by the Ministry of Agriculture in New Delhi from 18^th to 21^st November 2019. Addressing the media here today, Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra DG ICAR & Secretary DARE informed that the conference will be inaugurated by the Union Minister for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar and Chief Guest will be Bill Gates. The conference will be organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, ISI-CAS, FAO, the USDA, ADB, World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Eurostat, AfDB and various other organizations. The theme of this year’s ICAS is ‘Statistics for Transformation of Agriculture to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’.

Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra said that it is for the first time that such an important conference in the field of agriculture statistics is happening in the country and this will be a learning opportunity for the statisticians, young scientists and decision makers in India to adopt modern practises in agriculture such as Big Data analysis, AI, precision farming etc. He added that the conference is held with an aim to address various challenges faced in producing data to report on the SDGs and various leading research and also to deliberate and finalize the best practises in the field of agriculture statistics.

The Director General said that the Conference will see participation of more than 600 delegates of which 200 delegates will be from 108 countries. There will be 5 plenary sessions and 44 technical sessions. Dr. Mohapatra added that ample discussions are not happening in the field of statistics in the country today even if a large amount of data is available. He further emphasized that this available data should be utilised effectively in agriculture sector with help of modern methods and practises taking inputs from the conference.

Speaking at the briefing, Dr. Michael Steiner World Bank representative & International Statistical Institute-CAS chair said that ICAS is a series of conferences that started in 1998 based on overarching need for agricultural data worldwide. The conference is conducted every three years based on overarching need for agricultural data worldwide and the last conference was held in Rome in 2016. He added that the agenda for this conference covers domains of food and agricultural statistics, related methodologies, technologies and processes.

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APS/JP

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