Agriculture

Agriculture is the mainstay of the country’s economy and the situation is not different from North East Gonja district. The vast arable land of the district promotes agricultural activities in both crops production and animal rearing. Although, the potentials abound in the field of agriculture, poverty is still more pronounced among the people in the district.

Farmers in the district mainly engaged in crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry activities. Some hardworking farmers also grow tree crops such as teak, cashew and mango while the Shea trees and dawadawa are wildly grown and harvested.

The major crops produced in the area include maize, rice, wheat, Groundnut, yam and cassava. Moreover, commonest Live-stocks rearing are Goats, Poultry production, Guinea Fowls, Sheep, Ostrich, Dove and Duck. These are grown purposely to provide food and income for the people.

 Moreover, the sector is dominated by smallholder subsistence farmers and mostly dependent on rainfall.

As many as 80 percent of households in the district are engaged in agriculture.

Agricultural activity of households’ members by locality

Source: Field Survey 2022.

The table, shows the household’s agricultural activities by type of locality in the district. About 80% of households in the district practice one form of agriculture. Of those practicing, about 94.0 percent are into crop farming.

Agricultural activity is predominant in North East Gonja District due to its rural characteristics. From the Table, as many as 80 percent of households in the district are engaged in agriculture. About 70% of households in the urban locality are also into agricultural activities, compared with 81.3% within the rural locality are agricultural households. Greater proportion of households are into crop farming (94.0%) followed by livestock rearing (3.0%) with those in fishing (1.0%) being the least. This trend is consistent for the urban and rural localities with the proportion of household engaged in crop farming (69.7%), livestock rearing (9.1%) and fishing (0.7%) in rural being higher compared to the urban crop farming (60.7%), livestock rearing (9.0%) and fishing (0.0%)).

Crop farming is the most dominant type of agriculture practiced by the households in the district. In the urban localities, about 60.0 percent practiced this type whiles that of the rural locality is with about 69.7 percent