An Agricultural Economist has suggested that to be able to properly address post-harvest losses, resources need to be channeled towards saving crops that are considered to be critical to the nation’s food security.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Vaultz News, Dr. John B.D Jatoe, a senior lecturer at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana, indicated that there are different distributions for every crop that goes through post-harvest losses.
He maintains that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture should make use of the information available to them in channeling the resources in the right direction.
“When we talk about post-harvest losses for different crops, you’ll have different distributions across the country and as a ministry responsible for food and agriculture, we have to have that information. Now, when we look at which crops we consider to be critical to the food security of the nation, then we can pick and focus our resources on addressing where the need is most felt and then gradually now come out to recover the whole nation.”
According to him, post-harvest losses have been a long-standing problem and to properly address, it requires working with farmers and adapting to their needs as they change along the process.
“The needs are not stagnant, production patterns themselves are not stagnant and so, that should be our attitude; work with farmers and then because it is widespread, we have to focus our resources on where it bites us most because the distribution across the country is not the same.”
While explaining the difference between the types of farmers there are in Ghana, Dr. Jatoe stated that, the only thing farmers should have in common in fighting the situation is to adopt good agricultural practices.
“If we also look at the farmers that we have, they are not the same. If you look at it, just like every profession or group, some are ahead of others and the level of professional competence or the attitude towards the work that we do is not the same. But that in itself is not bad, I mean it’s just who we are. Some farmers are, as they are often described, subsistence farmers. Their focus is not so much on the market, their primary focus is ensuring the sustenance of their family. Now whatever remains after that is what they would sell so naturally the way they go about their farming activities would be different.”
Moreover, Dr. Jatoe cited an example as he emphasized the importance of good agricultural practices.
“Now but the trouble actually is, if we don’t stick with the good agricultural practices, there is timing for even the harvest itself. The maize, for example, may be ready for harvest but the fungi attacks it or even when they harvest it, they don’t have good drying facilities and then in the course of them trying to dry it, it gets mouldy and so it’s degraded in the process.”
When asked the way forward, considering some malpractices by farmers may be attributed to lack of knowledge, he noted that the process to reducing post-harvest losses will be a gradual one.
“So, that one is true that farmers knowledge and then their practices contribute quite a bit to post-harvest losses. So, what can we do? This one is something that we have to understand will be a gradual process because this one is about learning and then changing attitudes.”
