The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has organized a dissemination workshop in Tamale to bring out key findings of Ghana’s third Agriculture Census in Northern Ghana.

The report of the Ghana Census of Agriculture (GCA), which was conducted in 2017-2018 Agriculture season, would be disseminated further in the Middle and Southern Zones.

Participants of the workshop were Directors of Agriculture, members of the GSS, and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the Agriculture sector.

Mr Anthony Amuzu-Pharin, the Director of Social and Demographic Statistics of GSS, said the dissemination was aimed at making the key findings of the National Report of Ghana Census of Agriculture (GCA) simple to attract and sustain the interest of people to search for details of the report.

He said the dissemination was needed to take some agricultural decisions and some policy directions, adding that the report, even though was available, could not be accessible to everyone except those directly under the Statistical Service due to its cumbersome nature.

Some key findings contained in the census indicated that males have dominated the agricultural activities, even though women were found in agricultural homes, the youth in the Northern Zone are not much into agriculture. The report further revealed that about 80% of agricultural holders nationwide produce on lands less than two acres and, thus, cannot be said to be commercial farming.

Also, the GCA report showed that the level of education among agricultural holders is low. Nine in ten of persons aged 15 years or older engaged in agriculture have either never attended school or only attained basic education.

“About 87 percent of agricultural holders have either basic education (44.0%) or no formal education (43.1%). Majority of females (52.6%) have never attended school. Seven in ten persons engaged in agriculture are holders with higher proportion of males than females”.

The report, however, recommended that there should be support measures for the youth who wanted to venture into agriculture. It said they should be attracted, especially those with tertiary level education, among whom unemployment was high. The report stated that it was important to bring youth on board in order to promote diversity and complementarity.

“The full potentials of agriculture in employment, food security, foreign exchange earnings, wealth and investment outcomes are not being realized considering the current modes of operation and characteristics of the persons and institutions engaged in agriculture.

“Therefore, there is the need to address some issue such as adoption of new technologies, low productivity in agriculture and lack of resources, among others, that have plagued the agriculture sector to attract more people and investments into agriculture.”
GCA Report

It further recommended that government should provide a guaranteed market for agricultural products to attract more people to venture into commercial agriculture.

The Director of Social and Demographic Statistics said the data collection ended in 2019 and indicated that it was important to be sure of the quality of census data being produced, and, therefore, its dissemination delayed.

Professor Samuel K. Anim, Government Statistician, encouraged statisticians to be keen about the upcoming 2021 population and housing census, adding that, it was the basis for other censuses and surveys, characterised by development and disaggregation.

Mr Issahaku Alhassan, Regional Coordinating Director at the Northern Regional Coordinating Council, commended the GSS for disseminating the findings and said the findings should be used as a guide to implement plans for the agricultural sector and to devise ways to disseminate it further.