The southern forest-savanna transition zone of Ghana is a major producer of food crops, mainly cassava, Manihot utilisima, maize, Zea mays, and vegetables for the nearby urban areas and other settlements in Ghana. This change is associated with increased population growth and with increasingly inappropriate and unsustainable farming practices. In many areas within the zone, the traditional system of food production through the forest-based shifting cultivation is now virtually eliminated, there being little forest land left to sustain this land extensive system.
Most areas are now under continuous cultivation of maize-cassava intercrop.
The creeping effects of a shortage of good agricultural land are becoming insidious. Among the biophysical environments affected by this production pressure is the soil. In the humid tropical forest areas, much of the soil nutrient is stored in the trees, whose canopy protects the soils against the impact of the heavy rainfall and other weather elements in a delicate ecological relationship. Therefore, exposure of the soils by deforestation and bush burning leads to impaired nutrient status of the soil, soil structure degradation by erosion, dessication, compaction and other degradational processes. These have negative implications for the fertility and productivity of the soils.