Introduction

Agriculture is a crucial sector for reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) in Ghana where agriculture has been the mainstay of the economy. But the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has noted that despite the unquestionable importance of agriculture, it is arguably the least known sector of many economies in terms of hard facts and statistics (FAO, 2012). Any strategy geared towards reducing poverty and food insecurity must be based on timely and accurate information that can help to measure the impact of agricultural policies and programmes.

The objective of this chapter is to analyse the socio-demographic characteristics of agricultural households, the types of farming activities, cropping methodologies, crops and trees grown and land size, livestock reared, and fish farming in the Amenfi East district. For the 2010 census, an agricultural household was defined as where, at least, one person in the household was engaged in any type of farming activity, namely crop farming, tree growing, livestock rearing and fish farming (GSS, 2012). The definition then identified households in which various agricultural activities were undertaken.

Households in Agriculture

Table 7.1 shows that there are 18,620 households in the district and 78.6 percent of these households are engaged in agriculture. A higher proportion of households (81%) in rural localities are engaged in agriculture activities than in urban localities (49.1%).

Types of livestock and other animals reared

In term of specific agricultural activity, Table 7.1 further shows that a high proportion (98.5%) of households engaged in agriculture are into crop farming. The proportion of households into livestock rearing is 37.5 percent. Relatively small proportions of households, 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent are involved in fish farming and tree planting respectively.

Higher proportions of households in rural localities are engaged in all farming activities than household in urban localities. However, a relatively higher proportion of households in the urban localities (0.4%) are engaged in fish farming than households in rural localities (0.2%).

Table 7.2 shows the distribution of livestock, other animals and keepers. The four most dominant livestock reared are chicken, goats, sheep and fish farming. Chicken rearing recorded 117,654 birds with an average of 26 birds per keeper. Goat rearing recorded 16,465 goats with an average of 9 goats per keepers. A total of 15,591 sheep were recorded with an average of 11 per a keeper. Fish farming recorded 2,514 (number of fishes) with an average number of 193 per keeper.