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Table 17:
Percentage of Area Devoted to Food Crops on
More Nearby and More Distant Lands
Acreage on
foodcrops
Total
acreage'
070
The more nearby family lands 81.3 93.9
The more distant family lands 35.9 68.5
Total 117.2 162.4
87
52
72
This difference becomes even more significant if we consider the acreages
per farmer which, on the two categories offamily lands, were planted with
food crops. While on the nearer lands the acreage per farmer amounted
to 2.5, on the more distant lands this was somewhat less than one acre
(0.95). This suggests that on nearby lands like Odompem and Amoanda
food crops such as cassava, maize and plantain are much more frequently
grown for the market and not only for subsistence.
Hypothesis 3: The expectation that, in view of the more frequent
cultivation of food crops on the nearer lands and with the need to lose less
time on travelling, more of those farming there than on distant family lands
would be women, is corroborated by the difference of the percentages in
Table 18: on Osekyerew and Edumenu just over one-third of all farms in
the sample (or 35%) belonged to female farmers, but on Odompem and
Amoanda this was almost half (or 47 % ).
Table 18:
Percentage of Female Farmers on Nearby and
on More Distant Lands
Abs. %
The more nearby family lands 90 47
The more distant family lands 22 35
Total 112 44
N=
192
63
255
99