Introduction

Agriculture serves as one of the backbones to the development of the economy of the country and represents the major economic activity in the Bia West District in terms of employment and income generation. This chapter analyses the characteristics of agricultural households in the district. 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.

Households in Agriculture

Figure 7.1 shows that, the Bia West District has a total of 19,809 households, of which 78.2 per cent are engaged in agriculture and the remaining 21.8 per cent do not engage in agriculture. In urban localities, 63.8 per cent of households are engaged in agriculture but in the rural localities, 82.8 per cent are into agriculture. Households not engaged in agriculture for both urban and rural localities are 36.2 per cent and 17.2 per cent respectively.

Table 7.1 shows that of the total households (15,482) engaged in agriculture, 20 per cent are in the urban and the remaining (80%) is in rural localities. Total households engaged in crop farming in the district is 14,796 with 80.1 per cent are in rural while 19.9 per cent in the urban localities. With regards to tree planting, 25.7 per cent and 74.3 per cent are in urban and rural localities respectively. There are 7,346 households, which rear livestock in the district with 86.2 per cent in rural localities and 13.8 per cent in urban localities. One hundred and twenty-six (126) households are involved in fishing farming with 70.6 per cent in rural localities and the remaining (29.4%) being in urban localities. In general, more households in rural localities are engaged in various forms of agricultural activity than their counterparts in urban localities.

Types of Livestock and other Animals reared

Out of a total number of 278,372 animals and fishes (livestock), the majority of all livestock (68.5%) is chicken. Fish farming which is 12.7 per cent follows this; dove, grass-cutter, ostrich and snail are among the least of the animals reared in the Bia West District.

About 61.4 per cent of the number of keepers rear chicken; this has the highest, which is most common among the keepers. It can also been seen in Table 7.2 that 15.5 per cent of the keepers rear goats, whiles 13.4 per cent rear sheep. The average animal per keeper is 291 for fish fishing, snail (273) and marine fishing (133). The least average animal per keeper is five for other and 11 for goat and grass-cutter.