54% of Ghana's land in danger -Scientist

Research carried out over a six-year period has revealed that about 54 per cent of lands in Ghana are covered by plinthite, a substance under the soil that degrades the environment.

The substance, found in all the agricultural ecological zones of the country, degrades the environment permanently and therefore, kills food and cash crops. The Director of the Soil Research Institute (SRI), Dr. R.D. Asiamah, who did the research, said this at a day's workshop organised for researchers, and farmers under the SRI and SADACO foundation short-term project in Kumasi on late last week.

The workshop had as its theme, ''organic residues and food production in Ghana: successes, constraints and the way forward". Dr. Asiamah said the substance kills crops in areas where it is found and mentioned Asante Mampong and Kumawu, where it is found and is responsible for the destruction of cocoa in these areas.

He said Afram Plains and the Savanna zones were the most prone areas and warned that the Afram Plains might be degraded in the next 20 years by plinthite if care was not taken in the use of the land.

Dr Asiamah said plinthite is not found only in Ghana buy in tropical regions and attributed its presence to the exposure of the soil to constant degradation, including bush fires ''The best thing to do to avoid the hardening of the substance is to keep the soil covered all the time.''

Dr Joseph Opoku Fening, a research scientist at SRI, said SADACC was a sub- regional organization, made up of Ghana, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire and is tasked to improve food policy formulation and implementation through motivating capacity building and research.

He said soil degradation was getting very serious in Ghana and therefore, appealed for change in agronomic practices. Dr. Fening was happy that this year the incidence of bush fires was on the low side due to measures put in place to deal with offenders and hope the trend would continue.