Formal sector workers' participation in urban agriculture in Ghana: perspectives from the Wa Municipality

Urban Farm DB summary

A 2019 cross-sectional survey of 364 randomly selected formal-sector employees across four public institutions in Wa Municipality, north-west Ghana, analysed with logistic regression. Only 37.9% took part in urban farming; 62.1% did not. Participation was strongly gendered (44.1% of men versus 23.1% of women), and 78% of non-participants were under 35. Participants grew food crops (55.1%), kept animals (19.9%) or did both (25.0%), 68.1% at small scale. Annual earnings from the activity were GH¢101–200 (US$22–44) and monthly food-bill savings US$13–44, and 73.9% said they could feed their families from their own production — but against an average monthly salary of about US$289 the monetary contribution is modest. Significant predictors of participation were access to credit (+67.42%), being male (+20.9%), age and household size, while each additional year of education lowered the probability by 19.72%; household income, land access and access to agricultural information were not significant. The most cited barriers were production risk (90.3%) and weekend work duties (53.5%). The authors note the study covers one municipality and only non-essential-service formal workers, is cross-sectional, and that farmers could not reliably quantify yields.