Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 18.1 Concentration of home gardens per compound house in non-nucleated linear
settlements relative to nucleated settlements in PLEC study sites
Home garden concentration (number of
home gardens per compound house)
Study site
Settlement name
Non-nucleated
Nucleated
Amanase-
Whanabenya-
1.55
Whanabenya
Nyamebekyere
Abenabo
0.93
Obongo
1.15
Aboabo
0.75
Amanase
0.85
Aye-Kokooso
1.22
Sekesua-
Osonson Korlenya
2.20
Osonson
Prekumasi
1.00
Siblinor
1.30
Sekesua
1.15
Gyamfiase-
Otwetiri
0.46
Adenya
Kokormu
0.39
Yensiso
0.70
Average
1.36
0.78
Source: A 1998/99 PLEC survey
Sekesua-Osonson commented, “Because they [the tenants] are compelled to
hire the land for three years [i.e. short periods] they have to exploit it
intensively to make up the hiring charges.” In the view of a Sekesua-Osonson
landlord, “The tenants cut all the trees on the land to enable them to cultivate
the whole land for higher yields since the higher their yield, the higher their
shared part”, unlike the landowners, who “do not cut down all the trees”. Thus,
it would seem that in order to make ends meet and ensure survival, at least in
the short term, tenants are compelled by exacting tenancy obligations to over-
farm the land. This undermines biodiversity.
About 40 years before the PLEC project, Ghana's Ministry of Agriculture had
noted the exploitative character of tenancy when it described renting of farmland as
“the most destructive of all arrangements for holding land since the cultivator aims
at obtaining a maximum of returns in the shortest possible time; and this objective
transcends the need to adhere to good husbandry practices” (Division of Agricultural
Economics, Ministry of Agriculture, 1962: 7). Earlier Varley and White (1958) had
echoed this view. After observing environmental havoc caused apparently by
migrant-tenant monocultural maize farming on rented land in the southern forest
fringes (the forest-savanna transition zone) near Accra, the national capital, they con-
cluded that “as a long-term policy this system [of transient migrant-tenant farming
on rented land] is bad” (Varley and White, 1958: 92), because the tenants cut down
