ABSTRACT
Absorbing the large and rapidly increasing rural labour force in productive employment is one of the principal challenges of development, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Many farm families have responded to increasing population densities, declining farm sizes and environmental stress by increasing the extent of their participation in non-farm pursuits to generate additional income for family needs, despite the impact of Structural Adjustment reforms in the 1980s that were largely designed to restore the profitability of agriculture relative to non-farm activities. The determinants of labour allocation by rural households is analysed using the conceptual framework of Huffman. This chapter investigates the impacts of household and locational characteristics on the participation decisions of rural farm households in cash-oriented non-farm pursuits in Northern Ghana, where the latter include both non-farm production for cash sale and wage labour outside the household.
