Land Use and Land Cover Change Effects on Food Production Resources in the Offin River Basin, Ghana

The study examined land use and land cover change and its implication on crop production resources in the Offin River basin. Landsat images of Multi-spectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) together with farm survey and crop production data were utilized for the study. Handheld GPS (Garmin eTrex) and farming household questionnaire were used to map 398 farmlands. Integrated applications of ERDAS imagine (10.1) and ArcGIS (10.1) software coupled with Microsoft office tools were used to analyze landsat images, farming household and crop production data. The land use and land cover change analysis revealed that natural forest and secondary forest reduced by 54.03 % and 10.05 % while degraded land and deterioration of water resources sharply increased by 95.71 % and 78.60 % respectively. The study showed that 53.27 % and 70.10 % of smallholder farmers had cropland size less than 1 hectare and farmlands less than 2 hectares respectively. Finally, the production level of maize, plantain, cassava, cocoyam and rice had decreased considerably by 50.55, 65.68, 39.70, 88.34 and 88.45 % respectively. The policy implication is that the enforcement of environmental laws to compel municipal and districts assemblies to protect productive land and water resources should be vigorously pursued.