Switzerland: A Guide to Official Statistics on Agriculture, Population, and Food Supply

PART I -- In Part I which was compiled by Mrs. A. M. Hannay of the Library, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the official publications of Switzerland containing agricultural statistics which are in the library of the Department of Agriculture and in the Library of Congress have been listed and their contents noted. The Rapport sur le Commerce et l'Industrie de la Suisse has been included though it is a secondary source. The statistics it contains are for the most part based on official figures. Statistics of the separate cantons have not been included in Part I, except when they were found in publications of the Confederation. PART II -- In Part II the official agricultural statistics of Switzerland have been compared with those of the United States. The principal method of testing comparability has been to tabulate the statistics of Switzerland and the United States in parallel columns and to work out various significant ratios from them, such as that between population and agricultural land. These have been used as a basis for estimating the possible effects of differences in methods of collecting and analyzing the statistics, and for suggesting possible methods of reducing the existing data to a comparable basis and of collecting future statistics that will be comparable. In similar studies of other countries it is planned to make comparisons with the statistics of the United States, Switzerland and still other countries. In each case, the results will be related to the methods employed by the country in collecting the data for the 1930 World Census of Agriculture. Part II also contains a supplementary bibliography at the beginning of each section giving references to official sources of general population statistics; references to important secondary sources of information, statistical or otherwise; and references to discussions of methods of collecting and analyzing statistics.