Introduction

Agriculture plays a critical role in reducing poverty and promoting growth in the Ghanaian economy. Ghana, therefore, needs an agricultural revolution that is productivity and growth driven to increase income levels. This requires the partnership between civil society organizations, the private sector and the government to initiate policies that will promote the sector. This chapter analyses the agricultural activities in the Mamprugu Moagduri District, with the main focus on households in agriculture and types of farming activities.

Households in Agriculture

Households in agriculture refer to households with at least one member engaged in one agricultural activity or another. Table 7.1 presents information on the total number of households engaged in agricultural activity. These include crop farming, tree planting, livestock rearing and fish farming. The table indicates that 97.2 percent of the households in the district are engaged in agriculture.

Type of Farming Activities 

Table 7.1 again presents information on types of farming activities in the district. Farming activities considered during the data collection are crop farming, tree planting, livestock rearing and fish farming. The information shows that 98.6 percent of the households engaged in agriculture are involved in crop farming while 75.1 percent is into livestock rearing and 1.8 percent and 1.1 percent respectively engaged in tree planting and fish farming. The Table has no information by locality because the entire district is rural with no urban composition.

Livestock and keepers

Table 7.2 shows the distribution of livestock and keepers in the district. The table shows a total of 153,297 livestock in the district of which chicken record the highest number (26.3%) and is followed by cattle (22.8%). There are also more goats (18.1%) compared with guinea 44 fowl (17.1%). The proportion of turkey, snail, rabbit and fish farming together are, however, less than one percent of the total livestock population in the district.

The table further shows that there are 9,316 livestock keepers in the district. Of this number, one in four (25.9%) keeps goats while about 20 percent of them keeps cattle and about 11 percent takes care of guinea fowls. Overall, an individual keeps an average of 16 animals in the district. Among those who keep guinea fowls, each keeper keeps an average of 26 guinea fowls. Similarly, on average, 21 rabbits are taken care of by one keeper in the district.