Assessing the livelihood opportunities of rural poor households: a case study of Asutifi District
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Date
2014-07-21
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Abstract
About 87 percent to 89 percent of rural households in Ghana engage in small scale
farming to provide a variety of food crops to support the overall agricultural output in
the country. However, rural poverty in Ghana is deepest among food crop farmers due
to the vulnerable nature of their livelihood. Food crop farmers depend on single
weather oriented agriculture and find it difficult to avoid or withstand livelihood stress
and shocks such as drought, crop failure, pests and disease infestation. Hence, the
ability of the traditional farm sector “alone” to adequately sustain rural livelihoods
and income or reduce poverty among rural households is very much in doubt. The
promotion of complementary livelihood engines to enhance the income options and
provide new coping strategies is thus re-surfacing in rural development debate.
This study therefore focused on the need for rural households to develop additional
livelihoods to provide vital income diversification, spread risk and provide means to
cope when farming and other sources of income fail. A participatory research
approach was adopted for the study. The study employed the simple random sampling
method to select a sample of 138 heads of household who have adopted either
Grasscutter: Thryonomys swinderianus; edible Mushroom: Pleurotus ostreatus and
edible Snail: Achatina achatina production as an additional livelihood activity to
augment their livelihood options. Four other institutions were also selected and
interviewed. The primary data were collected through the use of questionnaires,
interview guide and observation to complement secondary data from literature.
The study revealed that the major traditional livelihood option for households appears
to be food crop farming (76 percent). Other households also engage in petty trading
(16 percent), livestock rearing (4 percent) and salary work (2 percent). However,
households earn relatively low income from these traditional livelihoods. When the
income gains from these traditional and the adopted livelihoods were compared, it
was revealed that the economic benefits or income gains from the adopted livelihoods
exceeds that of the traditional livelihoods thereby providing the needed coping
strategies and reducing the livelihood risks which previously surrounded their
livelihoods. The study therefore recommended that, rural households need to be
assisted to re-arrange their livelihood portfolios and traditional livelihoods that are no
longer economically and socially viable to be supported with new ones better suiting
the context of a more mature market economy.
Description
A thesis Submitted to the Department of Planning,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology Kumasi, in Partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Degree
of
Master of Science in
Development Policy and Planning, 2014