ABSTRACT
Agriculture provided the most important source of cash income in the Lower Volta in 1954 equal to around £25 per annum per household or about 70% of aggregate real income. Households in which farming was carried on as a main occupation decreased from 93 in 1954 to 78 in 1964, but there was rise in the number of adults engaged mainly in agriculture, from 129 to 199. However the trend towards an increase in employment in agriculture which was in evidence between 1954–63 was reversed after 1964 when fisheries in the newly formed Volta Lake offered very lucrative employment. The study of labour inputs showed that the average input of labour per farmer who claimed agriculture as his main employment totalled 696 hours per annum compared to 326 hours input per farmer who considered agriculture as a subsidiary employment. Previously a child of 10 to 14 years could probably equal half an adult in terms of labour input into agriculture.
