Farmers’Day25: Why US$1.9bn annual post-harvest loss should be of great concern?            

By Kingsley Webora TANKEH

A country with a US$2bn food import bill should be waking up with chills for losing an estimated US$1.9billion worth of farm produce annually to post-harvest losses, according to the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG).

This haemorrhage from our farms, our silos, our trucks and our markets should inform targetted policy to curtail if not eliminate this entrenched menace.

However, it seems political rhetoric and unrealistic promises – especially in agriculture aimed at canvassing the votes of farmers – are more important than solving the fundamental issues which bedevil the sector. We are so focused on ineffective initiatives to grow and produce more that we forget what comes after harvest.

PFAG’s estimates are conservative in a way, considering the quantum of paddy-rice this year alone that is yet to be sold. The cost of post-harvest losses is a silent killer, suffocating the country’s agricultural potential.

Ghana lost US$141million in a single year on its top four cereals alone. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture admits to annual losses of between 10-20 percent for dry cereals, with some independent studies showing maize losses near 30 percent.

The situation for perishables is far more concerning. An estimated 30-50 percent of fruit and vegetables never make it to the consumer. For tomatoes, 42.4 percent is lost in the major season – reaching over US$60million in financial losses annually, according to available research data .

Can you imagine the impact salvaging even half of this loss would have?

Mind you, we are not just losing the money; we are losing the very food that could feed the nation and fuel economic growth.

One must ask: what is the essence of government programmes supporting farmers to produce more, only for us to lose almost half of it after harvesting?

The success of the famous ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ in the 1970s is a distant memory.  However, the sad reality of poor road infrastructure and a lack of factories for adding value to our produce makes agricultural initiatives inefficient.

This season alone, an estimated 1,000,000 metric tonnes of paddy rice valued at GH¢5bn lies unsold in farming communities because there are no buyers. Though government released GH¢100million to the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) for mopping up the excess, the  intervention’s impact is yet to be realised, according to some farmers.

Farmers said the intervention is unsustainable given the quantum of produce involved and perennial nature of the problem, calling for a deliberate national industrial policy to stem annual gluts.

This is not one of the social issues that come on the news once and people talk about it and forget in a few days; it is a  serious problem for farmers who have invested their sweat and resources hoping to feed their families.

Our food security, our economy and millions of Ghanaians’ livelihoods depend on it.

About 40 percent of the workforce are employed in agriculture and 9 out of every 10 rural families depend on it. Hence, this sector should be our number-one priority.

While the sector’s contribution to GDP fluctuates – dipping to 19 percent in 2024 – its performance could be transformative if the post-harvest canker is tamed.

These are my personal opinions, not those of this paper.

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