Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
19
Resource access and distribution and
the use of land in Tano-Odumasi,
central Ghana
John A. Bakang, William Oduro, and Kwaku A. Nkyi
Introduction
This chapter discusses factors affecting resource access and distribution and how
this is linked to livelihood strategies, associated land-use forms or stages, and their
diversity and heterogeneity indices in Tano-Odumasi, central Ghana (Map B). It
focuses on some management diversity issues in the context of practice theory.
According to Ortner (1984, as cited in Endre Nyerges, 1997), “practice theory
seeks to explain the relation(s) between (individual) human action, on the one
hand, and some global entity which we may call 'the system' on the other.
Questions concerning these relationships may go in either direction - the impact
of the system on practice and the impact of practice on the system.”
Tano-Odumasi is a small town in the Sekyere West district of Ashanti region.
It is situated on the main Kumasi-Mampong road. It has a population of about
3,800 people in 1,350 households, with an average of seven members each,
housed in 512 compounds. The traditional inhabitants are Ashanti people. The
people are generally subsistence farmers who strive to produce surpluses for the
market. They do not use chemical fertilizers in their farming practice except in
vegetable production. A major management practice is slash-and-burn. Others
include bush fallowing or land rotation, all of which may involve mixed and inter-
cropping, and
proka
or
oprowka
, a no-burn mulching practice. The hoe and
cutlass are the main tools.
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