TITLE:
Sustainability Assessment of Smallholder Farms in the Savannah Transition Agro-Ecological Zone of Ghana
AUTHORS:
Johnny Kofi Awoonor, Edward Yeboah, Bright Fafali Dogbey, Fowzia Adiyah
KEYWORDS:
Sustainability, Land Use, Principal Component Analysis, Sustainability Index, Smallholder Farms
JOURNAL NAME:
Agricultural Sciences,
Vol.12 No.11,
November
9,
2021
ABSTRACT: The ever-increasing human population has resulted in political pressure to increase crop production. Currently, smallholder farmers are expected to be environmentally considerate, adapt to extreme climatic conditions and deal with financial instability. Despite these recent developments, farmers and their farming activities in these rural environs of developing countries need to improve household food and income security on a sustainable basis. A minimum data set selected from extensive data was used to determine indicators for soil sustainability assessment. This method involved expert opinion and statistical data reduction techniques. The results indicated that SOC, MBC, BS, EC, Spo and sand were the most important variables selected as MDS using PC analysis. Forest and Grassland had a high sustainability index (SI) while Savannah woodland, Fallow and Cropland were rated not sustainable (NS). For Cumulative rating using the total dataset (CR-TDS), Forest had a high sustainability index (HS), Savannah woodland and Grassland were sustainable (S) compared to Fallow and Cropland, which were sustainable with high input (SWHI). Also, for cumulative rating using the minimum dataset (CR-MDS), Forest, Savannah woodland and Grassland had high sustainability (SH) indices compared to Fallow and Cropland, which were considered sustainable with high input (SWHI). Sustainability index (SI) and Cumulative rating (CR) using the total dataset (CR-TDS) had a strong correlation (R2 = 0.91, p 2 = 0.44, p 2 = 0.60, p