Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 19.4 Access to land and associated land-use forms
Access routes
Land-use forms
Membership of landowning
Agroforests (
afupa
), orchards, fallows (grass-,
family
shrub-, and tree-dominated), annual
(sharecropping, house gardens)
Outright purchase
Orchards (cocoa, citrus, oil-palm)
Cash renting
Maize, cassava, local, and exotic vegetables
Sharecropping
Orchards, annual cropping
Generally, members of the landowning group have more land than immigrants.
Similarly, family heads and elders of the landowning groups generally have more
land at their disposal than ordinary/younger members do. Farmers who have more
land at their disposal tend to explore all the land-use forms identified in Tano-
Odumasi (Table 19.4).
Outright purchases on a large scale are generally more common in orchards
than in the traditional subsistence agroforestry,
afupa
. Where farmers were
involved in annual cropping, chemical fertilizers are more likely to be
employed in maintaining or improving soil fertility. They are also less likely
to fallow their lands.
Access through cash renting is usually for annual cropping, especially veg-
etable production. Generally farmers who access land using this route are more
often than not involved in commercial production for the market rather than for
subsistence. Migrants, young and ambitious indigenes, and mostly salaried
absentee farmers form the majority of this category.
Sharecropping is practised under two major land-use forms, namely annual
cropping and orchards (cocoa, oil-palm). As noted above (Table 19.4), share-
cropping of annual crops and also orchards is the preferred route of exercise
of access rights by elderly members of the landowning groups, while outright
purchasers sharecrop in orchards.
Land-use forms and biodiversity
Biodiversity values for various land-use forms in Tano-Odumasi are presented in
Tables 19.5-19.11. These include diversity and heterogeneity indices for three
plot sizes (Table 19.5), number of species in common among individual land-use
forms for three plots sizes (Tables 19.6-19.8), and species similarity values within
individual land-use forms for three plot sizes (Tables 19.9-19.11). The tables
show comparably similar values among some land-use forms (agroforest, native
forest, and house gardens). The similarity in values between the
proka
field and
agroforest seems to support the report from farmers that the two differ only in the
initial land preparation.
