View PDF Version - RePub

tion of sample cases over the four lands. The results as well as the data on
the selected lands are shown in Table 8.
TableS:
The Four Selected Lands by Distance and
Area with Census and Sample Sizes
Selected Average Area in Farm Farm Farm
Family Distance Acres, Census Operations Plans
Lands from Dunkwa Sample
Odompem 1.25km 380 42 IO IO
Amoanda 2.25km 1,160 151 22 22
Osekyerew 3.00km 180 24 25 25
Edumenu 6.00km 380 38 I3 13
Total: 255 70 70
3. Access to Land: For Whom and How Equitable?
We now come to consider the question of reserves of unoccupied land which
might be available within the Abura-Dunkwa territory. Inspection of the
farm plans shows that, apart from the fringes of waste land along the many
streams and on the steeper hillsides (as on Mounts Amia and Ofu), of small
corridors of kwaa (forest) at odd places as well as of theE pow (cemeteries)
on the Nnamfodo lands, there are only few areas under fallow older than
three years. As far as we were able to estimate, so-called odoto land (5-20 years
fallow) does not make up more than a half percent of the entire area. Hence,
we could only speak of a reserve of unoccupied land if we could apply it to
mfofo (see Ch. IV), i.e. land under short-term fallow. This is a reserve of a
kind, of course, but a reserve which is absolutely indispensable to those who
are presently cultivating the land and not available to others who have still
to start farming. This amounts to saying that no reserve of unoccupied land
needed to safeguard access to land for the future generation of farmers is
available.
That this is the correct conclusion is supported by the results of a
simple calculation. Taking as our starting-point that:
- the estimated number of farmers in the Abura-Dunkwa
population in 1978 was about 1150, and that
- the average farmer will, inclusive of fallow, need 6-8 acres of
farming land,
84