Indiscriminate sand winning activities is fast degrading arable farmlands in the Offinso district of the Ashanti region.
Farmers in the area are counting their losses as the miners besiege their farms with no prior notice to excavate sand from the parcel of land.
Major staples like rice grown in the district are under siege.
The Offinso district is known to be one of the food baskets in the Ashanti region, producing a variety of crops including rice, maize, cassava, among others.
But the production of these essential food items is threatened by activities of indiscriminate sand winning.
Alhassan Akologo farms rice, cassava, and okra on a two acre land but it has been destroyed by the sand winners.
“All the crops I grew up there have been destroyed. I grew garden eggs. While we were here I rushed there to salvage the little I can. When you begin to complain, the local chiefs will overpower you,” he said.
A closer view of the site revealed pillaging of the earth crust for sand, scooped into at least ten tipper trucks to be transported to the city for various building constructions.
When the news team approached the miners off record, they asserted to have the authorization of the land owner to carry out their activity.
But Alhassan is waiting to hear from the landowner after some of his farm produce were destroyed.
“If they had even paid me for destroying the crops, I wouldn’t be worried. So I went to the caretaker to find out from him and he told me the land owner in Kumasi sold it to them. I am waiting for the land owner, too. But as I stand here, they haven’t given me one cedi,” Alhassan added.
The district agriculture directorate explains the activities of the sand winners is a bane to agriculture in the area.
Measures to halt the activities of the miners have been futile.
District Agric Director, Kofi Owusu Boahen said the activities are depleting soil nutrients.
“When you remove the top soil, it affects the yield of the crops. Because that’s where the nutrients required by the plant are,” he said.
He said he did not have control over the activities of these sand winners.
“I don’t know whether they have contract with the chiefs or assembly,” Mr. Boahen said.
The Agriculture Directorate occasionally distributes coconut and oil palm seedlings for reclamation of the degraded lands.
“In my own way, that’s why I wrote to the Minerals Commission to supply us with the seedlings to help restore the lands,” he added.
According to available information, the sand winners pay a levy to the local authorities before they exit the community.
But agriculture and the soil integrity in this area are threatened by their activities until measures are adopted to control the sand winning.
