Introduction

Ghana’s economy is regarded as agricultural, largely due to the sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), labour absorption and foreign exchange earnings. However, in the Ashaiman Municipality, the contribution of agriculture to GDP is generally insignificant. An agricultural household is one that engages generally in agricultural activities or is said to be an agricultural household if at least one of its members engages in agricultural production even if not earning from agricultural activity alone.

The 2010 PHC asked questions on the following agricultural activities; crop farming, tree growing, livestock rearing and fish farming, engaged by any member of the household. The number of households engaged in agriculture is 1,912 out of 49,693 households in total the Municipality. This represents about four percent (3.8%) of total households in Ashaiman Municipality.

 Households in Agriculture

Table 7.1 represents the distribution of households in agriculture in Ashaiman Municipality. Food farming remains the most dominant agricultural activity involving 74.7 percent of all households. This is followed by livestock rearing 28.2 percent of households while Fish farming is relatively insignificant as less than one percent (0.8 %) of households are into this activity

Types of livestock and Other Animals reared

Table 7.2 shows the distribution of livestock reared and keepers in the Ashaiman Municipality. In all, 27,893 livestock are reared by 714 keepers and of these, chicken constitutes the highest, representing 26.2 percent, followed by cattle (25%). It is observed that silk worm and turkey livestock are not reared in the municipality and only two snails are reared in the municipality. A large number of persons are into Cattle, Chicken, Goat and Sheep rearing. There are more people keeping goats than any animal else 20.4 percent. The average animal per keeper for all animals is 39.1 and to 49.