Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

As of February 2018, the IBGE will release the January figures of the LSPA with a new list of products, reducing the 36 original products to 18, which are: upland cotton, rice, banana, potatoes, cacao, coffee (arabica and canephora), sugarcane, cashew nuts, beans, tobacco, oranges, cassava, corn, soybeans, sorghum, tomatoes, wheat and grapes. This change resulted from a study aimed at assessing whether the original list of products was suitable to the short-term characteristics of the survey while meeting the demands from the society, as well as at establishing clear criteria to define which agricultural products should be investigated.

The study pointed out that the LSPA, implemented by the IBGE in November 1972, aimed at meeting the demands for short-term statistical information on the harvests of agricultural products with higher economic and social importance. Over time, new products were included due to requests from government bodies looking for specific and regional information, which lost the reason to exist over the years. Moreover, the economic and social importance of products change over time, which demonstrated the need to the study on the list of products at national level.

Three criteria were assessed for the composition of the list of products of the LSPA. After the analysis of several technical areas of the IBGE, the criterium adopted for a product to be investigated by the survey was whether it represents at least 1.0% of the value of the national production or at least 1.0% of the Brazilian agricultural area. Therefore, the new list of 18 products that the LSPA follows up on a monthly basis accounts for nearly 93.0% of the production value and approximately 97.0% of the agricultural area in Brazil. The list of the LSPA products should be reviewed at each five years, according to the criterium mentioned above.

The other products that dropped the LSPA remain investigated by the Coordination Groups of Agricultural Statistics - GCEAs, coordinated by the IBGE in each State Unit, as well as remain regularly published in the Municipal Agricultural Production - PAM, which provides information on an annual basis.

Directorate of Surveys 
January 8, 2018