50 Per cent of locally produced food does not reach consumers

Ghana loses about 318,514 tonnes of maize in post-harvest losses every year, research has revealed.

The figure forms an average 18 per cent of the country’s total maize production in a year, with the average post-harvest losses at the district and regional levels ranging between five and 70 per cent.

The Northern Region’s 20,411 tonnes of maize post-harvest loss is the highest among the 10 regions, with Central Region recording the lowest and more modest 636 tonnes of post-harvest maize losses.

For sorghum, between 8,000 tonnes and 16,000 tonnes are lost in the major production areas of Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions.

The Upper West Regional Director of Agriculture, Mr Emmanuel Sasu Yeboah, who made these disclosures in Wa yesterday, said studies had also shown that generally, 50 per cent of food produced in Ghana did not make it to the consumer.

He said those conditions were mainly caused by post-harvest handling of the farm produce.

At the first Upper West regional post-harvest loss forum in Wa, Mr Yeboah said, “major crops cultivated by farmers in the region which suffer post-harvest losses include maize, sorghum, rice, groundnut, cowpea, yam and vegetables (tomato, okro and green leaves).”

The forum was sponsored by a Dutch development organisation, SNV, on the subject “addressing postharvest loss: implication for planting for food and jobs policy in the Upper West Region.”

Qualitative/quantitative losses

The forum was attended by farmers and farmers groups, extension officers, staff of the district assemblies, interest groups and individuals in the farm production chain in the region.

He said a research conducted by The Urban Association Limited (TUAL) on post-harvest losses of selected food crops in 11 African countries, including Ghana “revealed that almost half of food crops produced in the country do not make it to the final consumer”.

According to that report, which was sponsored by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), “as much as 60 per cent of yam produced in Ghana, for instance, does not make it to the consumer”.

Referencing former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, the regional director said “Ghana loses 20 per cent to 50 per cent of all vegetables, fruits, cereals, roots and tubers produced each year”.

Food security

Mr Yeboah said the issue of post-harvest losses had “serious economic and food security implication in the districts and regions”.

He said food losses did not only reduce food available for human consumption but also caused the loss of scarce production resource, increased costs of waste management, and the attendant greenhouse gas production.

Mr Yeboah said operations such as harvesting, shelling, cleaning, sorting, grading, packaging, storage and transportation were critical areas that affected post-harvest quality or loss of farm produce.

Managing post-harvest losses

The Country Programme Coordinator of THE SNV, Mr Eric Banye, said government needed to effectively integrate post-harvest management into all its agricultural programmes.

He said current short-term challenges such as bad roads, inadequate machinery, extension services and adoption of simple post-harvest technologies needed to be urgently addressed, as well.

The Regional Minister, Alhaji Sulemana Alhassan, said although agriculture contributed up to 40 per cent of the country’s aggregated production, the sector was riddled with challenges, including access to credit and post-harvest losses.

He said as a result of that situation, the government had made the modernisation of agriculture a more robust and sustainable one, an important component of the government’s transformation agenda.