Assessing The Impact Of Multi-Scale Gold Mining On Agricultural Land-Use,Farmers' Welfare,and The Environment In The Asutifi North District (Kenyasi),Ghana

The Asutifi North district(Keyansi)in the Ahafo region of Ghana is characterized by small landholdings of less than 3 acres per farmer as a result of the shrinking of the agricultural land due to increasing small and large-scale mining operations.Agriculture is one of the major activities of the majority of people in the district.Farmers in the district adopt capital intensification strategies such as the application of inorganic fertilizers to boost their productivity.Though mining activities have led to several land-use conversions,little or no studies have been done in that regard.Several studies have been conducted on the environmental impacts of mining with less emphasis on the impacts of mining on farmers' welfare.A quantitative analysis of the effect of land-use conversion on welfare in the study area has not been effectively dealt with.This thesis explores the perception of farmers with regards to the effects of mining in the district,the alternative major land uses in the study area,the determinants of participation in land-use conversion,and the effect of participation in land use conversion on farmer's welfare.Data was collected from 300 farmers in the district through a multi-stage sampling procedure.Three models excluding descriptive statistics were employed for data analysis and result interpretation.The Factor Analysis Model(FAM)was used to operationalized perceptions of farmers in the district,descriptive analysis was used to analyze the major alternative land uses in the study area,the probit model was to estimate the determinants of participation in land use conversion while the Heckman sample treatment model was used to find out the effect of participation in land use conversion on farmers welfare.Also,field observation was employed to examine the real-time effect of both small and large-scale mining on farmers'arable land.From the analysis,it was evident that farmers hold negative perceptions of the effect of mining on their livelihoods.Much the same,the analysis also indicates that participants of land use conversion also had about GHC 821.636 income annually than the non-participants.The study concluded that there is one set of perceptions on the effect of mining on the people's livelihoods thus livelihood perception.Also,Participants who had their lands converted for mining purposes obtained significantly higher income annually than their counterparts thus the non-participants.Both small and large-scale mining have negatively affected farmers'arable land.While effects of large-scale mining involve land grabbing,pollution of underground water,and insufficient compensations,the major effects of small-scale mining,however,include but are not limited to extreme deforestation,land degradation,and surface water pollution.The research recommends compensations given to farmers by large-scale mining firms should be increased to a sustainable level,this would also reduce the number of farmers who engage in illegal small-scale mining as a result of lack of sustainable income.Though farmers who participated in land-use conversion had higher annual incomes than the nonparticipants,however,their incomes are not always sustainable in the long run hence forcing them into illegal mining.The government and the mining firms should intensify proper education on how to invest their money received from compensations into a medium-scale sustainable business.The government and stakeholders should also roll out community small-scale mining projects aimed at teaching those farmers who have lost their farmland how to engage in sustainable small-scale mining taking cognizance of the environmental effects and ameliorating it.