Introduction Agriculture is a major economic activity in the Sene West District and the entire BrongAhafo Region. The key agricultural sub-sectors include crop farming, livestock rearing, fish farming, and tree planting. The economically active populations in the District are mainly into agriculture. The 2010 PHC collected data on agricultural activities; namely, crop farming, tree growing, livestock rearing and fish farming. The data collected consisted of types of crops cultivated and tree crops grown, farm size and type of cropping; livestock types, numbers and keepers and fishing activities. Within the context of the 2010 PHC, an agricultural household is defined as a household in which at least one person is engaged in any type of farming activity, namely crop farming, tree growing, livestock rearing and fish farming (GSS, 2013a). This chapter presents a summary report of key agricultural activities in the District as recorded by the 2010 PHC.

Households in Agriculture shows the population of households engaged in agriculture by locality type. The figure indicates that out of a total of 10,936 households in the District, 8,771 representing 80.2 percent are agricultural households, higher the average proportion for the region of 68.5 percent. Seven out of every ten (70.5%) urban households in the District are engaged in agriculture and about five out every six (84.0%) rural households are also engaged in agriculture. There is a higher percentage of non-agricultural households in urban areas (29.5%) compared to rural communities (16.0%).

 Types of Farming Activities 

shows the households by agricultural activities and locality in the District. The activities are crop farming, tree planting, livestock rearing and fish farming. There are 8,771 households in agriculture; however, 12,573 agricultural activities are reported. This implies that some households are engaged in more than one activity. On the whole each household undertakes an average of 1.4 different agricultural activities. Crop farming is nearly universal (95.1%). The second most prominent activity, engaged in by 46.1 percent of agricultural households, is livestock rearing. Fish farming and tree growing are nearly non-existent in the District with only 0.0 percent and 2.1 percent of households engaged in each.

With reference to urban/rural communities, a similar pattern is observed with the two traditional agriculture activities of crop farming and livestock rearing dominating. Almost all agricultural households in urban (93.5%) and rural (95.6%) communities are engaged in crop farming. Slightly more households in rural (47.2%) than urban areas (42.8%) are into livestock rearing. The few households in fish farming are in rural areas. The proportion of households engaged in tree planting is about the same among both urban (1.9%) and rural dwellers (2.2%).   

Livestock and keepers  

Livestock rearing is the second most important agricultural activity in the District concentrated in the rural areas. The type of livestock reared and keepers in the District, there are 125,124 livestock reared by 6,673 keepers. This gives an average of 19 animals per keeper. Chicken numbering accounts for 48.2 percent as the major animals reared by 42.0 percent of all keepers. The average number per keeper is 22. Goats follow with 21.2 percent of the animals.