Accra, Ghana, February 25, 2019//-Over the years Ghanaians have been moaning about poor food security which impacts negatively on the ability of the country to provide food on the table of every household.
News on post-harvest losses have been rife and as a matter of fact reduced the enthusiasm of many farmers to continue to till the land to provide for local consumption and for export.
From time immemorial the challenge of storing food crops especially the use of modern methods continue to elude most farmers who have applied the traditional ways of preventing post-harvest losses.
Our farmers have very effective ways of storing their harvest but they need that modern touch to catch up with technology.
Many years ago, the only means by which our farmers were able to avoid post-harvest losses was to build barns for cereals and tubers like yam, a process which is very strenuous.
Yam for instance is a very perishable food crop but our local farmers are able to store it till the next planting season and sell the surplus to take care of their household.
The farmers also built barns at the farm gates to store maize and they used the simple method of providing fire consistently under the barn to ward off weevils.
There is no doubt our hardworking farmers are putting food on our tables but the challenge is how to protect the tonnes of food crops that perish after harvest due to poor storage systems. Post harvest losses are real and it is recurring cost to our dear farmers.
Fortunately for us, we have built institutional capacities to be able to provide more information and knowledge about how to keep the food crops we have produced for our upkeep and for export.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has bodies under it that have adequate technological know-how to deal with the challenges of our development.
However, many of the research findings that can help ease the burdens pertaining to farming are gathering dust on shelves at the CSIR. It is sad that these findings are not being utilised.
That is why there is the need for collaboration between research and industry, be it in agriculture, health, education and business so that these findings can be operationalised for the good of mankind.
We at acknowledge that the traditional way of storing food crops and fish cannot work well in this era of increased population and that we need mass production of everything in order to meet the demands of the market.
Our worry, however, is that we have not been able to use the technology available to us to increase food yield or protect the harvest so that we do not go to the international community to beg for food handouts.
It is, therefore, the onus of the government to see to it that CSIR is well resourced to rediscover its mandate to change the development process by providing the answers to the issues that retard our progress.
A new season is here, let us do things right to yield better results.
By Maame Agyeiwaa Agyei