The Ghana Agricultural Production Survey, 2012 Minor Season

The Ghana Agriculture Production Survey (GAPS) undertaken by the Statistics, Research and Information Directorate (SRID) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is designed to provide data on community amenities, characteristics of farm families, utilization of land, use of inputs, outputs of major agricultural commodities, post-farm activities, household incomes, health of farm families, and health of farm animals on an annual basis. A three stage multi-sampling design was used for the pilot minor season survey. The survey also used clustering and stratificatio n approach for the design. The first stage involved a random selection of two districts for each region of Ghana. The metropolitan districts, such as Accra and municipal districts were excluded. The second stage involved a random selection of 40 enumeration areas (EAs) for each selected district and at the third stage 10 farm holders from every selected EA were targeted for selection. Nonetheless, as a result of the work load and human resource issues, the sample size was reduced to 5 holders per EA. The survey has sampling weights to account for the differential probability of inclusion of districts into the sample for the season. There is a limited extent to which results at the household and holder levels can be generalized beyond the sample characteristics. This is because the sampling weights do not account for the unequal probability of inclusion for household and farm holders.