Government has been called on, to train farmers on how to preserve their produce to help reduce the rate of post-harvest losses in the country.
This call was made by Dr. John B.D Jatoe, a senior lecturer at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana, during a discussion on “Facilitation of Warehousing Systems to Avert Post-harvest Losses” with the Vaultz News.
Although he commended government for the implementation of the One-District-One-Warehouse policy, he indicated that farmers as well as the people who are likely to operate the warehouses have no idea as to how warehouses operate hence, the need for training.
“Training farmers must be a major component of whatever intervention we’re putting in place. The warehouses are just physical structures and you know that even the warehouses themselves the operators need training. It’s not just the question of storing goods and commodities in the warehouses. It’s not just a question of dumping the produce in a shed.”
According to him, farmers may seem to understand a lot of things but the reality is they may not know the consequences they are probably going to face later.
“The government has to make use of the extension services to get farmers to appreciate simple things because you already understand a lot of the things but some of the things, you don’t see the immediate connection or link between what they do and how they do it and the problems that they later experience.”
When asked why farmers produce more than necessary while they are aware they may incur losses, he explained that it is not about the quantity produced rather the lack of proper storage amenities or knowledge.
“It’s not because they produce overboard, not necessarily. Some don’t even produce enough and yet they still incur or encounter post-harvest losses. It’s just that sometimes for example, the output is not enough for them but because all of them have to be harvested at the same time, managing it, getting it into a form that they can store, conveniently store in a proper way and maintain its condition through to when they need it, is not possible given their capacity to manage it and then some of the time, the environmental conditions too.”
Dr. Jatoe emphasized that even though some farmers may have enough labour or technology for harvesting, post-harvest losses may still occur since there are less amenities allocated to storage processes post-harvest.
“Remember that they are harvesting at the same time so if you have a line on the redemption technology or on the manual labour, you might not have the resources and then the space because you are relying on sun drying. So, you find that this crop you’re harvesting may not be enough for even you and your family alone and yet part of it may go bad.”
