Economy
Cocoa is an important part of the economy, including plantations and casual plantings along roadsides. The crop is dried and stored in warehouses for shipment. There are several small palm oil farms to the north of the Birim river, covering about 6,000 hectares. Byproducts from the palm-oil mills are used in soap-making. Bamboo is another useful and fast-growing crop, a strong and inexpensive material used for furniture and construction. The banks of the Birim river are rich in both gold and diamonds, extracted locally through artisanal processes.
The forests contain valuable trees, and there is some illegal lumbering. Ghana's forest area dropped from 8.2 million hectares around 1900 to 1.6 million hectares by 2000, and continues to decline rapidly due to demand both for exports and for construction by the growing population. Managed plantations are being introduced near Akim Oda and may help to reverse the decline.
Read more about this topic: Akim Oda
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.”
—Anthony, Sir Eden (1897–1977)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)