Introduction

Agriculture is known to be the bedrock of Ghana's economy and has consistently contributed significantly to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This chapter describes households engaged in agricultural activities in the Ekumfi District. It covers crop production, tree planting, livestock rearing and fishing farming.

Households in Agriculture

Figure 7.1 shows the proportion of households engaged in agriculture by type of locality. The results indicate that about 61.4 percent of households in the Ekumfi District are engaged in agriculture compared to 51.4 percent in the region. About 64.0 percent of households are engaged in agriculture in the rural areas compared to 39.0 percent of urban households.

From the information provided in Table 7.1, it could be deduced that about 93.0 percent of the households engaged in agriculture are crop farmers while 33.2 percent reared livestock. Again, of the total number of households engaged in agriculture, 94.4 percent are located in rural areas while 5.6 percent are in urban areas, indicating that agriculture is the main livelihood activity in the rural areas of the Ekumfi District. This reflects the general situation in the country where agriculture is the main enterprise in rural areas in Ghana (GSS, 2010).

Type of Farming Activities by Locality

Figure 7.2 shows households by agricultural activities and locality. The data indicate that crop farming is the main agricultural activity (95.1%) for agricultural households in the rural localities. Similarly, crop faming is also the main agricultural activity in the region (94.1%).Livestock rearing (91.8%), tree planting (86.0%) and fish farming (80.0%) are also commonly done in the rural areas than in the urban localities in the District.

Distribution of Livestock and Keepers

In the Ekumfi District, livestock rearing is the second largest agricultural activity after crop farming. Table 7.2 provides information on the distribution of livestock among keepers in the District. In all, there are 36,983 livestock, made up of birds, fishes to ruminants. Chicken represents 57.4 percent of the entire livestock in the District with 41.3 percent of keepers, followed by goats (22.9%) with 36.7 percent of keepers and sheep (11.1%) with 13.3 percent of keepers. Bees and ostrich are among the least reared livestock in the District. On the average, there are 10 livestock per keeper in the District. Of the 3,630 keepers of livestock in the District, 96.1 percent keep traditional livestock such as chicken, goats, sheep and pigs.The rearing/keeping of non-traditional livestock needs to be encouraged to diversify livestock rearing in the District.