Introduction

Agriculture is a major contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment and foreign exchange in the country; and in view of this, Ghana’s economy is regarded as agrarian. Among other things, inclusion of this sector in 2010 PHC is to provide a better understanding which may generally enhance decision makers’ ability to formulate relevant policies to improve the output of the sector. This chapter looks at the number of households in agriculture, types of farming activities and types of livestock, their numbers and keepers.

 Households in Agriculture

The 2010 PHC gathered data on households engaged in agricultural activities by locality. Table 7.1 shows agricultural and non- agricultural households in the district. The district is entirely rural and most of its households (78.6%) are engaged in agricultural activities whiles 21.4 percent are non-agricultural households.

Table 7.2 presents the frequency distribution of the different agricultural activities undertaken by the households in the Banda District. The data show that some households undertake more than one farming activity. Thus, the 2,897 agricultural households reported 4,219 agricultural activities giving, an average of 1.46 activities per household. This implies that 46.0 percent of the agricultural households in the district undertake more than one activity. This is a common practice among farmers in the country. For instance, almost every agricultural household combines crop production with some livestock rearing.

Figure 7.1 presents households by agricultural activities. Majority of agriculture households practice crop farming while 32.3 percent is engaged in livestock rearing. However, households involved in agro-forestry (tree planting) in the district account for the least proportion (0.8%). There is no record of fishing as livelihood activity pursued by the households in the Banda District.

Types of Livestock and Keepers

Table 7.3 shows the distribution of livestock and their keepers in the district. The table reveals that more than half of the animals kept in the district are chicken (58.1%). Most of the animals in the district also include goats (21.1%), sheep (12.9%), pigs (2.7%), cattle (2.1%) and guinea fowls (1.3%) with the rest of the animals forming less than one percent. In the district, chicken rearing engages most people with (40.0%) with an average of 16 chickens per keeper. Sheep keepers in the district form19.0 percent of all keepers with an average of eight sheep per keeper and that of guinea fowl keepers is 1.1 percent with an average of 13 animals per keeper. Keepers of grass cutter account for less than one percent (0.2%), and there is an average of eight animals per keeper. The average animal per keeper for ostrich is seven, with the proportion of keepers being 0.1 percent.