Esoko Ghana, a Commodity price survey service company, has appealed to government to expedite the one district, one warehouse project ahead of the harvest season for farmers to prevent post-harvest losses.
The one district, one warehouse project was launched in 2018 by government as one of its many initiatives to improve the agricultural sector, create jobs and develop communities.
As the harvest season, September to October, draws closer this year, many farmers and associations have called on government to help provide them with warehouses to help store farm produce.
Over the years, Ghana’s agric value chain has been attributed to post-harvest losses due to limited storage facilities for food produce.
This situation usually leads to farm produce going bad, making farmers poorer as they earn less for their work. It also threatens food security, as storage is critical for difficult times when such produce are not in abundance.
In March 2020, government announced that it was constructing 50 warehouses across the country, as part of the one district one warehouse project however, the said projects are yet seen.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto in April this year reiterated that government is constructing warehouses. According to him, about 80 warehouses are being constructed with the capacity to store up to 80,000 metric tonnes of food items aimed at ensuring food security.
He disclosed that these warehouses would be shared to the National Food Buffer Stock Company, the Ghana Stock Exchange, private sector organizations and the sector Ministry after completion for efficient operation.
Content Manager at Esoko Ghana, Francis Danso Adjei, in an interview called on government to show more commitment to meet this need.
He indicated that the lack of storage facilities will be a major problem for farmers and traders especially during the harvest season.
“We as a country would have to take a bold step to invest in post-harvest management and for that matter storage facility. When you go to the market now you will realize that a box of tomato that was being sold for between Ghc800 and Ghc1, 000 is now being sold at Ghc200, Ghc300. This is because if they don’t give it at that price, they have no way of storing the commodity. We need to invest in storage so that once we have excess, we can store them and during the lean period, we can start releasing them onto the market to make sure that we have stable supply.”
Francis Danso Adjei
Commodity Prices
As Esoko Ghana usually conducts commodity price survey, for the month of June 2020, the price of cassava recorded the highest increase among a number of foodstuffs. A bag of cassava now costs 158 cedis, that is, a 12.9 per cent increment.
Prices of imported rice was the second highest after cassava with a 9.9 per cent increase, selling at 404 cedis per bag.
100 tubers of Pona sold at 892.67 cedis after increasing by 6.65 per cent whereas white cowpea also gaining 6.03 per cent costing 452.00 cedis per bag.
Gari also recorded an increase of 3.10 per cent in price with a bag being sold at 242.14 cedis while the price of groundnut shelled increased by 2.93 per cent to close at 582.29 per bag.
The price of Wheat went up by 1.54 per cent to close at GHS 304.20 per bag with maize also gaining 0.52 per cent to close at GHS 167.14 per bag.
However, the price of tomato plunged by 42.99 per cent to close at GHS 532.00 per crate with local rice losing 2.49 per cent in prices to close at GHS 336.29 per bag.
