lecturer warns of national disaster

Story: Boahene Asamoah

A lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Prof. Charles Quansah, has warned of imminent national food disaster if the country fails to adopt sustainable land management practices to avert land degradation.
He said the current small-hold farming practices which led to land degradation and also the clearing of land for farming practices could pose a threat to national food security, economic development and sustainable livelihood in the near future.
Speaking in an interview shortly after the opening of a two-day workshop to finalise and adopt agricultural sustainable land management strategy in Accra on Wednesday, Prof. Quansah stated that as a result of these farming practices most arable lands had been degraded as a result of erosion and also the inability of the farmers to replenish nutrients lost as a result of land clearing.
Prof. Quansah stated that there were a number of policies in that direction but stressed that what needed to be done was to operationalise them to ensure proper land management.
Stakeholders in land management throughout the country are deliberating on a draft sustainable land management strategy and country strategic investment framework for sustainable land management.
The two-day workshop would afford them the opportunity to make inputs into the strategy which would help address land degradation in the country.
A Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in charge of Crops, Mr Clement Eledi, said statistics available indicated that about 70 per cent of the country’s land was under serious threat of desertification, which is precipitated by soil erosion.
Again, he said another study conducted by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research had revealed that unsustainable agricultural land management practices cost the country about two per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“Land degradation is seriously mitigating against the government’s effort at poverty reduction because it is the poorest of the population who bear the disproportionate share of the cost of land degradation,” the minister stated.
The Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mr Jonathan Allotey, called for a collaborative effort of all stakeholders to ensure a good policy on sustainable land management.