A GNA feature by Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Zanlerigu (U/E), Dec 30, GNA – For the past decades, Nyaaba Dittoh, a 62-year-old smallholder farmer in the Nabdam District in the Upper East Region has engaged in subsistence farming to take care of his household.
Farming for livelihood
Farming has been his lifetime job on his four-acre farmland and the only source of livelihood for his family where he cultivates millet, guinea corn, maize and other local vegetables including okra and kenaf that feeds the family and serves as source of income for fees of his children.
“This land is my inheritance, it’s not just a land, it’s my father’s sweat, my children’s future, and my identity, Nyaaba with his voice tinged with both pride and sorrow told the Ghana News Agency (GNA).
However, for the past four years, the 62-year-old smallholder farmer and his household have been compelled to abandon the four-acre farmland due to activities of illegal mining.
Illegal mining, known locally as galamsey, crept into his community. It began subtly, with strangers and some indigenes offering quick cash to the local people in exchange for their lands.
So far, Nyaaba’s pristine farmland, transformed into a muddy wasteland, its rich, fertile soil and vegetative cover stripped away in search of gold by both locals and strangers.
“I tried to fight it, I begged the miners to stop, and I even built a room on the land to stay there and watch over the land, but they will usually come midnight to work”, he narrated.
Scenarios
According to him, due to his persistence against the perpetrators having their way, the illegal miners managed and changed his room padlocks and locked him up in his room and went about their activities, destroying his crops and investment.
Now, Nyaaba struggles to make ends meet, currently relying on occasional menial jobs, while his children’s education hangs by a thread, and the hope of rebuilding his farm feels like a distant dream.
Similarly, Sagbila Yinbil a 52-year-old smallholder farmer from Talensi District has lost his three and half acre soyabean farmland and where he used to crop maize, groundnut, bambara beans, beans and guinea corn as the only source of livelihood for him and his household to activities of illegal mining.
“When they (illegal miners) came, they told me that if they dig the land for the gold and turn the soil, it will become fertile and indeed for the first year, I had a lot of harvest but for the past three years I have been struggling to get half of what I used to get”, he lamented.
The once fertile soil that fed his family and neighbours became a lifeless expanse of gravel and toxic pits while the miners moved on, leaving behind devastation and despair on the faces of the farmer.
“This year, I borrowed money from a friend to buy fertilizer for the farm, but it did not yield anything, and I don’t know how I’m going to pay him back and feed my family till the rainy season”, he wept while sharing his ordeal with the GNA.
The plights of Nyaaba and Sagbila are among thousands of Ghanaian smallholder farmers across the country who have lost their farmlands and sources of livelihoods to activities of illegal mining and unregulated small-scale mining.
According to the General Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU) of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Ghana has lost 2.5 million hectares of its forest reserve to illegal and uncontrolled mining.
Again, the Ghana Cocoa Board also reported in 2022 that, the country lost 19,000 hectares of cocoa farmlands to illegal mining, throwing a lot of farmers out of business.
According to World Vision Ghana, the country lost about 40 percent of its forest reserves to degradation and was the third fastest forest depletion nation globally.
It added about 80 percent of total land area in the Upper East Region had suffered from moderate to severe land degradation, and about 16 hectares of tree cover in the region had been lost due to human activities such as lumbering and illegal mining between 2001 to 2020.
SITUATION IS DIRE
Currently, Northern Ghana is becoming the hub of mineral deposits particularly gold and illegal mining is also spreading like wildfire across the five regions of the North especially in Upper East, Upper West and Savannah Regions.
For instance, almost every district in the Upper East Region has gold deposits and despite the presence of two large scale mining companies in the region, illegal mining continues to be widespread across many communities.
Checks by the GNA indicates that activities of illegal mining were rampant in several communities in the Yameriga, Gbane, Sheaga in the Talensi District, Zanlerigu, Dagliga, Nangodi in the Nabdam District and Sapeliga, Zongoyire in the Bawku West Districts.
However, the GNA uncovered similar activities in Sherigu in the Bolgatanga Municipality, Soe in the Bongo District, and Sandema in the Builsa North District.
A visit to some of the places discovered several hectares of farmlands have been destroyed by these illegal miners, deep pits dotted, and farmers forced to abandon their farmlands they had depended on for many years.
Engagement
More people in communities are engaged in the activities that some landowners have given their farmlands out for illegal mining.
Ganizoya, illegal miner who was busy in search for gold under the scorching sun told the GNA that although he knew the practice was destroying the farmland and making it unproductive, he was getting money from it as compared to the farming.
“It is because of money that we are doing this. We know it is destroying our lands, but we don’t have anything to do during the dry season”, he said.
Mba,another illegal miner, if the government could provide alternative livelihood interventions for him, he would stop doing illegal mining.
FOOD INSECURITY THREATS
Many families in Northern Ghana depend on agriculture and many being vulnerable smallholder farmers who are losing their farmlands leading to food insecurity and increasing poverty levels.
Alhaji Zakaria Fuseini, Upper East Regional Director of the Department of Agriculture noted that issues of illegal mining on farmlands were dire and the menace affecting farmers in the region, already impacted by climate change and therefore losing farmlands could only worsen people’s ability to get fertile lands to cultivate crops.
“If there is struggle for food, it can cause chaos and so we will carry out sensitisation especially among the youth and the chiefs who are considered to be involved in these activities”, he said.
Mr Wepia Awal Adugwala, National President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) who spoke to the GNA underscored the critical role of smallholder farmers to the country’s food security.
“About 80 percent of the food we eat in Ghana are produced by the smallholder farmers. During the COVID era, it was the smallholder farmers who kept this country alive because we could not import food due to the closure of the borders”, he said.
Mr Adugwala indicated that apart from pollution and destruction of forest reserves and water bodies, which was rampant in Southern Ghana, illegal mining had rendered several hectares of farmlands unproductive, displacing the already poor farmers, making them food insecure and deepening their poverty levels.
“If nothing is done to stop illegal mining immediately, there will be no future for agriculture in Ghana and that is why we have been calling on the new government to ban mining in water bodies, forest reserves and farmlands.
“The 24-hour economy is a good policy, and we support it, but we need to protect the land and the environment to be able to produce the raw materials that we want for the industries”, he stressed.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Dr Asher Nkegbe, an Environmental Protection Expert and National Focal Point of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification told the GNA that illegal mining was taking notoriety in many communities in Ghana especially in rural areas.
According to Dr Nkegbe, who is also the Upper East Regional Director of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the destruction of the vegetative cover was contributing significantly to the climate change crisis that was currently being faced, threatening efforts at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
He noted that goal 15.3 called for sustained actions to be taken to ensure sustainable water and land management and there was the need to end irresponsible mining to protect the environment, to protect lives and enhance productivity.
“No one is against mining”, he noted, adding “but it must be done in an environmentally friendly manner.
“To varying degrees, land degradation affects 20 to 40 percent of the world’s land area, deteriorating the welfare of 3.2 billion people”.
He, therefore, called for collective efforts, emphasizing intensified education for people to understand the adverse effects of illegal mining and strengthen and enforce regulations to curb the menace.
SDGs AND WAY FORWARD
While acknowledging the devastating impact of illegal mining on water bodies and ecosystem, its catastrophic consequences on farmlands for food and nutrition production and subsequent threat to food security could not be overemphasised.
The menace is currently causing havoc especially to smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana and Upper East Region in particularly which call for urgent action to address.
The many households that are handicapped with several hectares of arable lands lost exposed them to food insecurity, malnutrition, hunger and poverty, which threatened their contribution to the achieving the SDGs particularly goal one, two, three and 15 which talks about ending poverty, hunger and ensuring sustainable land management.
The situation needs urgent action and would require increased public awareness on the devastating impact of illegal mining and the need to promote and adopt more environmentally friendly and sustainable practices especially on farmlands.
Government, through its decentralised agencies and security need to strengthen law enforcement measures and surveillance especially beyond Southern Ghana to help curb the menace and save the country’s food security system.
Government must also consider banning of mining activities in farmlands, water bodies and forest reserves to allow for properly regulations and enforcement to promote responsible mining.
GNA