Soil and Land Suitability Assessment for Rice Cultivation at Tono Irrigation Area in the Upper East Region, Ghana

Agriculture is one of the livelihood supports for the people of Upper East Region of Ghana. Soil evaluation research was conducted at Tono Irrigation Scheme to assess soil and land suitability for rice cultivation in the irrigable area of Tono Irrigation Scheme. A total of eleven (11) soil samples were collected and analysed for their chemical and physical properties. Based on field observation and criteria for soil suitability assessment, the different soil types that were identified were classified at the series level based on their position, parent material and the observed physical characteristics. The results indicated that the pH of the soils was within the acceptable range for crop production;however, the overall fertility level of the soils was very low. Physically, the upland soils were well to moderately well-drained, consisting of coarse-grained sandy loams topsoil overlying similar sandy loams and sandy clay loams at depth. They included Leptosols and Lixisols. The soils of the Scheme under lowlands and valley bottom sites, however, included Eutric Gleysol, Calsic Vertisol, Eutric Fluvisol and Eutric Plinthosol, which were heavily textured and relatively poor drained, or medium-textured and moderately to imperfectly well-drained. They showed a low to a very low rate of water percolation losses, which is good for the current farming system of cropping rice within the lowlands and valley bottom sites of the Scheme.

Assessing the palliative aspects of green innovations in the non-linear tendencies of environmental sustainability-financial globalization nexus among West African states

A reconciliation of the disagreement on whether financial globalization(FG)affects ecological footprint through the scale,technique and composition effects cannot be achieved without an explicit understanding of the direct and indirect interactions of FG with environmental sustainability.Hence,the novel perspective of this study lies in the investigation of how green innovations moderate the non-linear tendencies in the FG-environmental sustainability link among western African states given the abundance of natural resources and the prevailing pace of economic growth.The core findings are obtained from robust analysis based on cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag(CS-ARDL)technique,the augmented mean group(AMG)technique,and the common correlated effects mean group(CCEMG)advanced estimators.Firstly,the beneficial ecological impacts of green innovations were observed.As per direct impact,enhanced financial globalization(FG)exhibits non-linear detrimental ecological effects.However,green innovations cushion the observed adverse ecological effects of FG.Furthermore,resource rents reduce ecological footprint within the moderating framework of green innovation as the environmental Kuznets curve(EKC)is validated among the states.Additionally,a bidirectional causal link between financial globalization,green innovations,economic growth,natural resources,and ecological footprint was observed.Thus,the significant policy implication is for the West African states to decisively increase their investments in green innovations while strategically encouraging the share of ecologically friendly resources in total resource utilization to guarantee a more sustainable environment.