State statistical services: Statistical Officer / Assistant Statistical Officer (State PSCs and selection boards) · India · State Public Service Commissions and Subordinate Service Selection Boards
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersHow crop production is measured: area from complete enumeration, sample surveys and area frames, yield from crop-cutting experiments on randomly located plots, the Mahalanobis and Sukhatme debate on plot size, crop insurance CCEs, and newer satellite, model and smartphone-based methods.
In the exams: AICE-JRF Ag Stat Unit 5 'crop estimation surveys' (heavy); UPSC ISS Statistics III-IV official statistics (present); state DES statistical-officer exams (present)
UPSC Indian Statistical Service and state statistical services (reported)
Official agricultural statistics: land-use classification, TRS, EARAS, ICS, GCES methodology, advance estimates and crop insurance yield estimation.
How our questions for State statistical services spread across the units of Crop Area & Yield Estimation: Crop-Cutting Experiments. Difficulty: 9 easy, 21 medium, 1 hard.
| Area statistics: complete enumeration, sample-based (EARAS, TRS) and area-frame methods | 6 | |
| Production = area x yield: the statistical structure | 5 | |
| Estimation of yield and its standard error at district and state level | 4 | |
| Improvement of Crop Statistics (ICS) scheme and quality checks | 4 | |
| Crop-cutting for crop insurance: number of CCEs and technology-assisted CCEs | 3 | |
| Crop-cutting experiments: multistage design of villages, fields and plots | 2 | |
| Field protocol: plot location, harvesting, threshing and driage | 2 | |
| Plot size, shape and border bias in crop-cutting | 1 | |
| Yield estimation for horticultural and plantation crops | 1 | |
| Remote sensing, crop models and smartphone data in yield estimation | 1 | |
| Estimation of crop losses due to pests and diseases | 1 | |
| International practice: FAO guidelines and objective yield surveys | 1 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
The EARAS scheme was set up mainly for states that:
C. Lack village land records for complete area enumeration
EARAS (Establishment of an Agency for Reporting Agricultural Statistics) created staff to enumerate area in a sample of villages in states, historically the permanently settled areas, without village land records.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
What sampling design do India's General Crop Estimation Surveys use for crop-cutting experiments?
C. Stratified multistage random sampling
Strata are tehsils or blocks; villages, fields and plots are the first, second and third-stage units, all selected at random.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
How is the crop-cutting plot located within a selected field?
C. By random coordinates from a fixed corner of the field
Random coordinates within the field's length and breadth avoid the bias of choosing better-looking patches; the centre is a systematic, not random, choice.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
A 25 m^2 crop-cutting plot yields 10.0 kg of fresh paddy. The driage factor is 0.85. What is the yield in kg/ha of dry paddy?
D. 3400
Yield = produce x driage x 10,000 / plot area = 10.0 x 0.85 x 10,000 / 25 = 3400 kg/ha. Ignoring driage gives 4000; dividing by the driage factor gives 4706; using 100 instead of 10,000 m^2 per ha gives 34.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
How is a state's average yield of a crop obtained from district figures?
D. State production divided by state area
State production is the sum of district productions; dividing by state area gives an area-weighted yield, not the simple mean of district yields.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
What does the percentage standard error of a yield estimate express?
A. The standard error as a percentage of the estimate
Percentage SE = SE / estimate x 100, the CV of the estimate, the usual reliability measure.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
What is the main purpose of the Improvement of Crop Statistics (ICS) scheme?
C. Sample checks of area records and supervision of crop-cutting
Under ICS, central and state supervisors check crop inspection in a sub-sample of TRS villages and supervise a sub-sample of CCEs to detect and correct errors.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
The threshold yield of an insurance unit is 1.92 t/ha and the crop-cutting yield this season is 1.5 t/ha. What percentage of the sum insured is payable?
C. 21.9%
Claim share = (threshold - actual)/threshold = (1.92 - 1.5)/1.92 = 21.9%. Dividing by actual yield gives 28.0%; 78.1% is actual yield as a share of threshold.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
What is the main difficulty in estimating losses due to one particular pest?
A. Separating it from other pests, weather and management
Yield reductions have many causes acting together, so attributing loss to one pest requires careful design or modelling.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
What is the purpose of the 50x2030 Initiative?
B. Building integrated agricultural survey systems
50x2030 supports low- and middle-income countries in building agricultural data systems that combine surveys and other sources.
Further reading: Sukhatme et al., Sampling Theory of Surveys with Applications; Panse, Estimation of Crop Yields (FAO)
Ten here, 31 in the app. The Laisha app has every practice question we have written to State statistical services in this subject, marked as you go, with timed papers, a jump-to-unanswered list and a certificate when you pass at 70 per cent.
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