Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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annual cropping
•
agroforest
•
house/home garden
fallows, dominated by
C. odorata
, a notorious weed.
Virtually all the households kept livestock, most commonly goats, sheep, and
the domestic fowl.
The survey showed infrequent occurrence of orchard, forest, woodlot, and edges
or hedgerows. Woodlots were mostly made up almost exclusively of
Cassia
siemens
. The edges encountered were in the form of cassava planted around a yam
field of the farmer Kwabena Asiedu, and a line of cashew along one side of a food
crop farm of the farmer Florence Akoto, all in Gyamfiase-Adenya.
Typically the agricultural holdings were fragmented into fallow and cropped plots.
The plots show a mosaic pattern in Gyamfiase-Adenya and portions of Amanase-
Whanabenya where land is owned communally by extended families of Akuapem
people, whose forebears were migrant cocoa farmers. They exhibit a more regular
pattern in Sekesua-Osonson and areas of Amanase-Whanabenya where land is
owned privately by individual persons and families of Krobo and Shai/Siade people,
in accord with the linear or longitudinal
huza
arrangement devised by their forebears.
The number of farms ranged from one to eight per farmer-respondent, whilst
an individual farm unit rarely exceeded two hectares. Total size of agricultural
land holding ranged from less than a hectare to about 300 ha per farmer.
Table 6.1 provides a summary of the farm management regimes and organiza-
tional aspects. The major advantages associated with some of them are summarized
in Table 6.2, a repetition of Table 5.1.
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Site preparation and tools
Sites for cropping are prepared by slashing, using the cutlass/machete, and burning
the slashed vegetation. Often, trees having economic, medicinal, and ecological or
some other value are left standing and even nurtured, with the food crops inter-
planted among them in a traditional kind of agroforestry.
The hoe is used to turn the soil and make mounds, ridges, and drainage chan-
nels. Together with the cutlass, the hoe is the tool most commonly used for
sowing and clearing weeds.
By extensive burning of vegetation and the resultant destruction of faunal habitat,
the indiscriminate use of fire contributes significantly towards biodiversity erosion in
periodically cropped areas. Similarly, because of its damaging effects on plant prop-
agates or seed stock in the soil, extensive usage of the hoe is suspected to be a major
cause of biodiversity loss, especially in areas farmed by tenants who rely heavily on
this implement. By contrast, because of its low environmental impact, the cutlass
exerts a less damaging effect on biodiversity. A similar less damaging effect is
achieved by
proka
, a land preparation method that avoids burning of the slashed
vegetation, but rather uses it for mulch as described in Chapters 11 and 14.
