Introduction

In Ghana agriculture has been the mainstay of the economy. The agricultural sector is also an important contributor to the country’s foreign exchange earnings. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has noted that despite the unquestionable importance of agriculture, it is arguably the least known sector of many economies in terms of hard facts and statistics (FAO 2012). Any strategy geared towards reducing poverty and food insecurity must be based on timely and accurate information that can help to measure the impact of agricultural policies and programmes.

The objective of the chapter is to present data collected on agriculture in the 2010 PHC on households engaged in agricultural activities of crop farming, tree planting, livestock rearing and fish farming.

 Households in Agriculture

Agricultural activity is not very common in Tema Metropolis due to its predominantly urban characteristics. Table 7.1 and Figure 7.1 show households in the metropolis that are engaged in agricultural activities in 2010. About 3.6 percent of households engage in agricultural activities.

Among them, 74.7 percent engage in crop farming, 27.3 percent rear livestock, 4.6 percent are in tree planting and 1.0 percent are engaged in fish farming.

Type of livestock and other animals reared

Table: 7.2 show numbers of livestock and keepers in the metropolis in 2010. The highest proportion of livestock is chicken (47.5%), followed by goats 12.7 percent, cattle 10.0 percent sheep 8.4 percent and pigs 5.5 percent.

About 32.7 percent of the keepers rear chicken, 25.6 percent keep goats, 11.0 percent have cattle, 8.8 percent rear sheep and 6.3 percent keep pigs. The average number of livestock per keeper are as follows: chicken 88, sheep 58, cattle 55, pigs 54 and goats 30. The three ostrich keepers in the metropolis rear on average 201.