Households in Agriculture

Agricultural activity is not very common in Greater Accra due to its predominantly urban characteristics. Only 6.6 percent of households are agricultural households. In urban localities, only 4.4 percent of households are agricultural households compared with 31.4 percent in rural localities. The rural districts of Dangme West and Dangme East have the highest proportions of agricultural households in the region (49.8% and 37.3% respectively) and this is true for both urban and rural communities.

 Among rural communities, 59.3 percent of Dangme West households are agricultural households, followed by 46.2 percent in Ga South and 46.0 percent in Dangme East. Agricultural households found in the urban areas and the more urban districts are likely to contain individuals who work in the fishing industry and those engaged in urban agriculture, growing mainly vegetables along the major drains in Accra for the hospitality industry.

The average size of agricultural households is 5.0 persons. This is higher than the general average household size in Greater Accra (3.8 persons). This is expected because agricultural household sizes are generally higher than general household sizes due to the labour requirements of agricultural activities. It could also be due to high fertility and the lack of access to clinics for contraceptive and related issues. Dangme East has the highest agricultural household size (5.7) and Ledzokuku/Krowor the lowest (4.3).The highest proportion of heads of agricultural households in Greater Accra is aged 35-44 years, followed by 22.1 percent aged 45-54 years.

 The highest concentration of agricultural household heads aged 65 years and over is found in Dangme East (18.0%). The age of heads of agricultural households can be used as a proxy to assess the involvement of young people in agriculture. The results above confirm the perception that the youth may no longer be attracted to agricultural activities, and most of them are more interested in ICT and related sectors. A lower proportion of agricultural household heads in urban areas than in rural areas are in the younger or oldest age groups.

Type of Agriculture

 80.2 percent of the households in agriculture in Greater Accra engage in crop farming, 35.8 percent livestock rearing, 4.5 percent tree growing and 0.5 percent fish farming. Adenta, Ga West, Dangme East and Ga East, respectively, have the highest proportion of crop farming households (88.9%), tree growing households (11.7%), livestock rearing households (61.4%) and fish farming households (0.9%). There are 121,070 farms in Greater Accra growing about 64 different crops. Based on the number of farms growing particular crops the most common crops grown are cassava, pepper, maize, tomatoes and carrots. Farming in Greater Accra is mainly by mono- cropping (49.6%), although substantial proportions of farmers also practice mixed cropping (26.2%) and inter-cropping (24.2%).