Accra is a city, and farming is a small part of it - but a real one, and closer to the plate than most people realise. In the 2010 census only 6.6% of households in Greater Accra farmed, yet 90 to 95% of the lettuce eaten in the city is grown in and around it, on plots you have probably walked past without noticing.
What is in season this month, with every crop, animal and fish below, is on its own page:
Two kinds of farming
Inside the city, about 800 to 1,000 farmers grow irrigated vegetables on tiny plots - 0.01 to 0.02 of a hectare each - along drains and streams, beside roads, around public buildings and on any open land nobody is building on yet. They water by can, from the drain, the stream or a shallow well. Roughly 60% grow “exotic” vegetables - lettuce, cabbage, spring onion, cauliflower - and the rest traditional ones: tomato, okra, ayoyo, garden egg and hot pepper. Their customers are the restaurants, hotels, canteens and street food sellers of the city: more than 200,000 people eat these vegetables every day.
All of it together is small: between 47 and 162 hectares, more in the dry season, when irrigated plots are at their best, than in the rains.
Outside it, on the flat coastal savanna of the Accra Plains and in the districts to the north and east, farming is the ordinary kind: cassava, maize, vegetables, mangoes, pineapples, rice, cattle, sheep and goats. In rural Greater Accra 31.4% of households farm, against 4.4% in the towns.
Where it happens
| Where | What happens there |
|---|---|
| Inside the city Accra, Tema and Ashaiman | Irrigated vegetables on tiny plots along drains, streams, roadsides and open public land, watered by can from drains, streams and shallow wells. Most grow exotic vegetables - lettuce, cabbage, spring onion, cauliflower - and the rest traditional ones: tomato, okra, ayoyo, garden egg and hot pepper. Land is contested and often insecure as the city builds over it. |
| The Accra Plains Tema to Ada | Flat coastal savanna on black clay soils, which the Ministry of Food and Agriculture says could be irrigated far more than it is. Maize, cassava, vegetables, cattle, sheep and goats. |
| Dangme West and Dangme East Dodowa, Ada and the east of the region | The farming heart of the region, with the highest shares of farming households. Dangme East has the most households keeping livestock. |
| Shai-Osudoku Dodowa | Greater Accra's part of the mango belt it shares with the Eastern and Volta regions. In December 2024 its growers reported a bumper harvest and too few buyers. |
| Ada West Ada | A cassava district, promoted to investors for it. |
| Ga West, Ga East, Ga South and Adenta The city's western and northern edges | Adenta has the region's highest share of crop-farming households, Ga West of tree growers and Ga East of fish farmers. Rural Ga South is almost half farming households. |
| The coast Chorkor, Jamestown, Tema, Prampram and Ada | Canoe fishing, and the smoking and processing of the catch. |
The district shares, from the 2010 census:
- Dangme West covers 41.5% of the region, and 49.8% of its households farm - the highest share anywhere in Greater Accra. Dangme East follows at 37.3%, and 61.4% of its farming households keep animals.
- Adenta has the highest share of farming households growing crops (88.9%), Ga West of tree growers (11.7%) and Ga East of fish farmers (0.9%). In rural Ga South, 46.2% of households farm.
Those districts have since been split and renamed - Dangme West is now Shai-Osudoku and Ningo-Prampram, Dangme East is Ada East and Ada West - but the census figures are for the districts as they then were.
— The map of Greater Accra’s districts
What grows
In 2010 Greater Accra had 121,070 farms growing about 64 different crops. The most common, by number of farms, were cassava, pepper, maize, tomatoes and carrots. Of the region’s farming households, 80.2% grew crops, 35.8% kept livestock, 4.5% grew trees and 0.5% farmed fish.
Half the fields grow one crop (49.6%); the rest are mixed (26.2%) or intercropped (24.2%) - maize between the cassava is the classic pairing.
By weight, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s 2010 tables put the region’s crops in this order:
| Crop | Tonnes | Hectares |
|---|---|---|
| Cassava | 68,170 | 6,834 |
| Watermelon | 17,350 | 814 |
| Cabbage | 15,910 | 238 |
| Tomato | 14,871 | 10,464 |
| Hot pepper | 14,595 | 5,727 |
| Okra | 12,809 | 4,447 |
| Rice | 12,773 | 2,323 |
| Onion | 1,905 | 211 |
| Garden egg | 1,902 | 325 |
| Cucumber | 283 | 21 |
| Lettuce | 280 | 34 |
Read the hectares as well as the tonnes. Cabbage is grown on a sliver of land and still outweighs nearly everything, because a hectare of it yields many times what a hectare of cassava does - which is exactly why it suits a city plot.
Treat these tables with some care
They are from 2009-2010, and the Ministry’s web pages that carry them had unrelated spam text in their page frame. The figures agree with the census - the same crops lead in both - but they are old, and a newer Census of Agriculture (2017/18) exists whose Greater Accra tables could not be extracted. Some combinations look odd: tomatoes on more land than any other vegetable, for a modest weight.
Livestock and fish
In the Accra Metropolis, 49.1% of the livestock is chicken: 30% of the people keeping animals keep chickens, an average of 88 birds each. Goats are 16.0%. Sheep and goats are the region’s main ruminants, grazing free or tethered even in the urban districts, and the Accra Plains carry cattle - though much of the beef sold in Accra was raised in the north and brought down for slaughter.
The Ministry also backs “alternative livelihoods”: rabbits, grasscutter, bees, mushrooms and snails. Snail keepers in the Accra Metropolis kept an average of 326 each in 2010.
— How to start a poultry farm near Accra
Then there is fish. Greater Accra has 220 km of coast, and canoes land sardinella, anchovy, mackerel and tuna at Chorkor, Jamestown, Tema, Prampram and Ada. The catch follows the sea’s own seasons, not the rain’s.
— Fish seasons on the Accra coast
The two rainy seasons
The calendar is set by rain, not temperature. The major rains run from about April to July, the minor rains from August or September to October or November, and December to February is dry, with the harmattan. About 800 mm falls on the coast in a year and up to about 1,270 mm inland.
So the farm year runs roughly like this:
- December to february. Dry, with Harmattan haze; hot by February. Dry-season irrigated vegetables are at their best - lettuce, tomato, cabbage. The minor mango harvest runs into January and the cassava harvest is on. Sea fish are plentiful in the upwelling.
- March to may. The hottest stretch, then the rains start in April. Land is prepared and maize, cassava and sweet corn go in. The major mango harvest begins in April, and fertiliser demand peaks.
- June and july. The major rains at their heaviest, with flooding in valley bottoms and below the Weija dam. Cassava planting finishes in July. Mangoes peak. The second upwelling starts in July, and vegetable plots in low ground flood.
- August to october. A short dry spell, then the minor rains. The major maize and sweet corn harvest - roasted corn season. Minor season maize and cowpea are planted, and onions from August. The upwelling runs to September.
- November. The minor rains end. Minor-season maize and cowpea come in, the cassava harvest starts and the minor mango season begins.
Irrigated vegetables break the pattern: they grow all year, and are at their best in the dry season, when the sun is strong and the rain is not spreading disease. That is why tomatoes and lettuce are cheapest and best from December.
— Weather and seasons in Accra
— Mango season in Ghana
The problems
Food safety. The water city farmers use comes from drains and streams, and it often carries far more faecal bacteria and worm eggs than the WHO’s guidelines allow. Studies of Accra’s lettuce found it contaminated whatever the water source. How vegetables are washed and handled - on the farm, at the market and at home - makes a real difference.
Wash salad leaves properly
Remove the outer leaves, wash in several changes of clean water, and cook leafy greens when you can. Be most careful with anything eaten raw: lettuce, cabbage in coleslaw, and spring onion.
Land. Urban plots are on land that belongs to somebody else or to nobody in particular, and as the city builds over it the farmers move on or stop. Access to land and the security of holding it are the main constraints city farmers name.
Floods. Fields in valley bottoms and coastal wetlands flood in heavy rain, including when the Weija dam spills.
Age. Most heads of farming households are between 35 and 54; few are young.
Buyers. In December 2024 the mango growers of Shai-Osudoku reported a bumper harvest and too few buyers to take it, and asked for boreholes to irrigate.
Where to buy it
The city’s markets are where most of this ends up, and the cheapest way to eat in season is to buy what the market is full of.
— Accra’s markets
— Where to buy food cheaply
— What to eat in Accra
Where this comes from
A research brief compiled for this site on 6 October 2026, from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the 2010 census as published by Ghana Districts, IWMI and KNUST studies of city farming, and the other sources listed in full on the seasons page. Planting and harvest windows not stated by a source are marked as typical there.