The RGA is a statistical operation covering the whole country. It collected, processed and disseminated structural data on the agricultural sector at the various levels of the administrative hierarchy, through a complete enumeration of all agricultural holdings: 1,018,951 holdings enumerated.

Fieldwork was carried out over nine months, from March to November 2009, for the reference agricultural year running from 1 March 2008 to 28 February 2009. The project was governed by the presidential order published in Le Moniteur on 23 October 2008 and was supported by the National Steering Committee, the Technical Support and Steering Committee (IHSI, CNSA, CNIGS) and the Central Bureau of the Agricultural Census (BCRA), with backing from FAO and the European Union.

The atlas draws on the Synthèse nationale des résultats (national summary of results) published by MARNDR in October 2012, specifically its annex tables by department (annex 11) and the national table on constraints to development (table 10-1).

The atlas strictly separates statistical granularity (the level at which the RGA publishes a value) from cartographic granularity (the level of detail of the boundaries displayed). The map may be more detailed than the data; the data can never be more detailed than the source.

When a department is selected, the map zooms in and displays its communes and communal sections with a graphic hierarchy of boundaries (thick for the department, medium for communes, thin for sections). These subdivisions are given no value: the departmental figure is neither copied to them nor split between them, and no commune-level choropleth is produced.

Departmental indicators are shown as a choropleth in five classes. The method used is quantiles: the ten departmental values are sorted in ascending order and split into five classes of two departments each. The legend shows the actual range of each class, the minimum and maximum, the unit, the indicator and the year.

This method gives a robust ordinal reading with only ten units; it does not convey the spread between classes, which remains visible in the bar ranking and in the values shown on the map.

National values calculated by the atlas (the average of the ten departments) are explicitly flagged as atlas calculations and are never presented as RGA values.

Of the indicators, the great majority are values published as they stand. Calculated indicators use only RGA values taken from one or two tables; their formula is shown in the indicator’s method sheet. Rates are calculated on unrounded values, then displayed to one decimal place.

National shares are calculated by the atlas as the ratio of the department’s value to the published national value; departments may not sum to exactly 100% because of rounding in the publication.

• Date. The data describe the situation observed in 2008/2009 and do not represent the current state of Haitian agriculture. The label “RGA 2008/2009” appears in every analytical view.
• Boundaries. The administrative boundaries date from 2018; commune boundaries may have changed between 2009 and 2018. They are for orientation, not for statistical analysis.
• Granularity. No commune-level or communal-section-level value is published in the national summary, so the atlas displays none.
• Calculations. Departmental averages, national shares, differences and rates calculated by the atlas are flagged as such and can be checked against the tables cited.
• Not applicable. Some tables include a “not applicable” category (institutional or collective holdings), so indicators by sex do not add up to exactly 100%.