Agriculture Activities
Introduction

Ghana’s economy is basically agrarian, largely due to its enormous contributions to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, foreign exchange earnings, food for local consumption and raw materials for the agro-based industry. The sector’s contribution to GDP is about 30 percent in the past decades (ISSER, 2000, 2011). The objective of this chapter is to analyze agricultural households and non-agriculture households and the types of farming activities by the agricultural households.

Households in Agriculture

A greater proportion of households, about eight in ten are agricultural households involved in the cultivation of crops, planting of trees, rearing of animals or breeding of fish for sale and family consumption. Table 7.2 shows that the highest percentage of households is engaged in crop farming (98.2%), followed by livestock rearing 41.2 percent. Among the households, insignificant percentages are engaged in tree planting and fish farming, 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent respectively.

Types of Farming Activities

Farming activities in the District are mainly crop farming, tree planting, fish farming and livestock rearing, including poultry. The highest percentage of the households, that is 98.2 percent, engage in crop farming while about 41 percent also engaged in livestock rearing. Only a small proportion of households engage in tree planting (0.2%) and fish farming (0.1%).

Table 7.2 shows the distribution of livestock reared, number of keepers and average animal per keeper. There are 88,419 livestock with 6,718 keepers with an average of 13 animals per keeper. The poultry sector engages 2,795 keepers with an average of 18 birds per keeper. With respect to ruminants there are 22,918 goats with 2,446 keepers giving an average of nine (9) animals per keeper, followed by sheep with an average number of nine (9) animals per and pigs with an average of 12 animals per keeper.

The non-traditional livestock kept in the District include grass-cutter (209), rabbits (510), snails (877) and bee (5). Fish farming is not a common activity among agricultural households in the Bosome Freho District even though some communities are located around Lake Bosomtwe, the largest natural lake in West Africa. This resource needs to be harnessed to diversify the agricultural activity in the District.