Independent laboratory testing of the galamsey-mined ground is complete, carried out by ZALF Berlin — the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research.
A restoration project that measures its own starting point has not measured anything. The baseline is what every later claim about carbon, soil organic matter and heavy-metal recovery will be compared against, so it has to come from someone with no stake in the answer. ZALF was engaged for that baseline and for nothing else; the laboratory that carries out long-term monitoring has not been appointed, and our preference is that it is Ghanaian.
Baselines before planting, in that order. It is the slower sequence and the only one that survives an auditor.