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1. 1 • In many developed countries administrative sources have developed into a standard source in compiling social and economic statistics. • Business and agricultural registers are growing in importance. For agricultural and environmental statistics also remote sensing and GIS are becoming an often used data collection methodology. • What is the future for agricultural statistics with respect to data collection methods and how will it be organized? Is there a trend from surveys to statistics partly or even purely based on these new information technologies?

2. 2 Agricultural statistics should not be looked on themselves but be studied in the context of rural development; be placed in a context with the environment, economy etc. To maintain agricultural statistics as part of mainstream statistics it is needed to link these with environmental statistics: agricultural - environmental indicators, rural development, etc. To what extent is this linking with other fields of statistics a real challenge and to what extend just a dream?

3. 3 For the developing countries the agricultural statistics are an essential and basic part of their statistical system. The ad hoc approach focused on only one domain of statistics did prove not to be the most successful approach for the development of sustainable statistical systems in these countries. Would a sector wide approach (SWAP) for agricultural statistics really be a better way to go ahead than the ad hoc focused support to specific surveys or studies?

4. 4 Globalization is recognized as an important challenge for economic and social statistics. Also in agriculture the globalization trend is visible in countries specializing in certain crop production and increasing trade flows of agricultural products (and also for example bio fuels) between regions and countries. Is this trend also recognizable in agricultural statistics, and if so, how do agricultural statistics have to develop to include these trends of globalization?

5. 5 Compared to other statistics (economic, social) agricultural statistics are relatively far from the direct reach of statisticians at the national statistical offices. As a result the communication and coordination on the international level of agricultural statistics is rather restricted. Could an intensified interest via - for example - one or more specific groups (eg city groups) lead to a better recognition of the weak and strong areas and to coordinated actions to get more information on specific agricultural statistics?

6. 6 Climate change is currently a very important issue. Climate change is expected to have a large impact on society. The impact of climate change on agriculture production etc is still hardly known. How can agricultural statistics prepare themselves on the enlarged interest and especially the expected increased need for longitudinal data and data on short term effects of this trend for areas/regions and products?

7. 7 Reduced human resources are challenges for the statistical institutes, competing with new developments in statistics. Which are the domains of agricultural statistics where we have to concentrate on, giving these the highest priority during the next five years?