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Abstract
The necessary data on agriculture must be available for public and private decision-makers in
the agricultural sector to use agricultural information for decision-making, solve problems or
increase their knowledge. As a result of the deregulation of the agricultural marketing sector
in South Africa, the supply of these data decreased. Also, the needs for data on agriculture of
the various decision-makers, i.e. the policy-makers, researchers, agricultural service
industries as well as the farmers and extension officers, changed. Since information systems
are based on the needs of the decision-makers, the need for data on agriculture should be
determined before either existing methodologies are improved or new methodologies are
introduced to increase the supply of data on agriculture in South Africa.