Introduction

Agriculture is the practice of cultivating the land or raising stock. Agriculture was the main stay of the people of Agona East District. The major economic activity in the District was agriculture. This chapter discusses household members and heads of households engaged in agricultural activities in the Agona East District. Areas of discussion include crop farming, tree growing, livestock rearing and fish farming.

Households in Agriculture

Information on households in agricultural activities by type of localities is presented in Figure 7.1. The proportion of households who are engaged in agriculture in the district is 69.9 percent. The proportion of households in the rural areas (76.3%) engaged farming activities is higher than those in the urban areas (61.6%).

Figure 7.1 further shows that the proportion of agricultural households engaged in crop farming is 97.0 percent, with 96.0 percent in urban areas and 98.0 percent in rural areas. About 20.0 percent (19.0% in urban localities and 22.0% in rural localities) of the households are engaged in livestock rearing. Only a very small proportion of agricultural households are engaged in tree planting (1.0%).

Types of Livestock and other Animals reared

The distribution of livestock and keepers as represented in Table 7.1 shows that there are 71, 603 livestock in the district with 4,156 keepers. This gives an average of 17.2 livestock per keeper. Chicken is the most common livestock reared in the district followed by goat rearing. While chicken constitute 53.2 percent of all livestock reared in the district and engages 44.5 percent of livestock keepers, goat rearing constitute 20.6 percent of the livestock reared in the 47

district and it engages 36.9 percent of livestock keepers. There are 45 beehives kept by 6 people with an average beehive per keeper being 7.5 percent.