Introduction

Agriculture is the main stay of the District’s economy which is mainly rural. It employs a relatively higher proportion of households in the District. The key agricultural activities include crop farming, livestock hearing, fish farming and agro-forestry. The land is suitable for the production of various crops such as maize, rice, vegetables, yam, plantain, cassava and cocoa.

This chapter discusses households in the District who are engaged in agriculture. It covers the types of farming activities and the percentage of households engaged in those activities. It also looks at households engaged in the various agricultural activities with respect to the type of locality.

 Households in Agriculture

Figure7.1 shows the percentage of households engaged in any form of agricultural activities and non-agricultural activities by urban and rurallocalities. The District recorded a total of 73 percent agricultural households as of 2010. The proportions of urban households engaged in agricultural activities are 58.5 percent compared to80.5 percent of the rural households. The high proportion of agricultural households in rural areas is basically due to the fact that agriculture is essentially a rural activity.

Types of Farming Activities

Four types of agricultural activities considered during the 2010 PHC are as follows: crop farming, tree growing, livestock rearing and fish farming. The proportions of households engaged in the various types of farming are presented in Table 7.1. The highest proportion of farming households are engaged in crop farming (94.5%), while the least proportion of households are into fish farming (0.3%). More than 9 in 10 rural households (95.1%) are engaged in crop farming compared to almost the same proportion of urban households (92.9%).

Type of livestock, animals reared and keepers

Livestock rearing is the second most important agricultural activity after crop farming. Table 7.2 shows the types of livestock reared in the District. The 2010 census counted a total of 121,203 livestock of different species in the District. Out of this number, there are 7,676 keepers and an average of 15.8 livestock per keeper. Among the ruminants, the top three are 19 percent with 34.1 percent of keepers for goats, 7.6 percent of sheep with 11.5 percent of keepers and 4.4 percent of cattle with 1.8 percent of keepers. The average animal per keeper for goat, sheep and cattle are 8.8, 10.5 and 38.8 respectively.

In addition, there is approximately 58.9 percent of chicken being reared by 43.6 percent of persons, 1.7 percent of guinea fowls being reared by 1.6 percent of persons, 0.3 percent of doves being kept by 0.2 percent of persons and about 2.7 percent of ducks being reared by 3.1 percent of keepers. Among the other livestock (non-traditional livestock) reported, grass-cutters and rabbits recorded 0.1 percent each.