Characterisation of soil physical properties for pond design for aquaculture among rice farmers at Kwabre district
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Date
2009-08-09
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Abstract
Agriculture, the backbone of the Ghanaian economy employs around 51% of Ghana’s work force. Currently most younger farmers are quitting and moving to urban centres for other forms of employments because they claim it is not lucrative.
There are various ways of minimising this drift and one of them is by developing alternative livelihood for small-scale farmers so that the full potential of the land and the farming skills of the farmers will be achieved. This study concentrates on the way of developing aquaculture through the initial soil study so as to develop alternative livelihood in fish production in earthen ponds.
The study area of this project was a valley bottom site at Adawonmase in the Kwabre District of the Ashanti Region in Ghana.
Farmers grow rice at the start of the rainy season (April/May) and harvest within three to four months (August/September). After harvesting the rice, they do not do any meaningful agriculture since by then the rains have stopped.
In a bid to develop an alternative livelihood for the farmers, an initial reconnaissance study was undertaken to interact with the farmers.
The farmers showed keen interest after a series of interviews on possible alternative livelihood to rice farming that they can practice in the off season. They expressesd interest in practising off-season aquaculture as a better alternative to farming in their locality.
In a bid to shape up this development of an alternative livelihood in fish farming, a lot of soil data was collected from two different sites (flood plain and upslope part of the valley bottom) and tested at the soils laboratory for their various soil physical properties so as to know the soils’ water holding capacities which will aid in modelling a pond type for construction in the future.
Finally, after numerous soil analyses, an embankment pond, was proposed to be constructed on the upslope part of the valley bottom. This is because of the compactive nature of the clayey soils there and how easy and inexpensive it was construct these types of ponds.
Description
A Thesis submitted to the Department of Agricultural Engineering,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology,
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in soil and water engineering,2009