One of the activities to be performed under the Ghana Core Agriculture Surveys (GCAS++) is the Crop-cutting operations (CCO), a field survey to collect crop production data and a study of a plot yield. The plot yield and crop production data are vital information for policy formulations and planning related to food security and for assessing the performance of the agriculture sector over the period. The plot yield multiplied by the area planted under cultivation of a specific crop determine production for the crop in the country.
The crop-cut method has been adopted for the crop cut survey to collect data for crop yield, and area under cultivation or sizes of holder’s parcels/farms. The method is recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), to estimate crop production. A strong advantage of this crop-cut method is that the area of the cut is known and thus does not introduce an error into the final yield computation.
The exercise will be undertaken in both the major and minor seasons which will correspond to the beginning of planting season, April/May, in the South, and Oct/Nov for both the Northern and Southern parts of the country respectively. However, for the major season, the CCO will be conducted only in the south and that includes the first eleven (11) regions in the southern and middle belt and excludes all the five (5) Northern regions.
The GSS is collaborating with SRID of MOFA to conduct the survey to produce baseline statistics for international comparison and for data to shore up regional and districts database across the country. One of the major objectives of the CCO Survey is to estimate the total production of the different crops/vegetables in the country by Region and District. The production of a crop is obtained by multiplying its areas with its yield per unit area.
