Post Harvest Loss threatens Food Security

By Emmanuel Kubi
THE PRESIDENT of the National Farmers and Fishermen Award Winners Association of Ghana, Phillip Abayori has hinted that high costs of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, agro chemicals, lack of improved seed and inadequate warehousing facilities, have largely accounted for 40 percent of post harvest losses.
He said the situation could worsen for smallholder farmers and affect the country’s productivity in the coming years if the current trend of agricultural financing is not reversed.
Mr. Abayori made the appeal Tuesday during the Invest in Ghana 2010 seminar organized by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) in Accra.
He revealed that agricultural financing and credit advances to the sector this year was only one per cent, a development he described as bad for productivity. Consequently, he charged the banks, government, MDGs and investors in the private sector to come on board to help change the trend towards the attainment of food security for Ghana.
He also called of on farmer-based organizations (FBOs) to forester prudent partnerships with foreign investors to give agricultural business a new face.
Urging financial institutions especially the banks to increase finance and credit to the agricultural sector to boost productivity, Mr. Abayori called on investors to consider investing in areas like irrigation technology, equipment, post harvest management, agricultural insurance, the establishment of a national agricultural fund and an export trade house abroad to increase confidence in the sector.
He said sustaining and improving on the country’s 6% agricultural growth means “there is the need for a merger of medium and large-scale agriculture into a highly productive and efficient sector, ready to achieve and sustain the 6 percent annual growth rate over the medium term. This is crucial to enhance a broad-based agricultural growth capable of reducing poverty and accelerating economic growth.”
According to him the current production was achieved by the nation’s smallholder farmers who constitute 60 percent of the productive workforce.
“Even with the inadequate funding of 1 percent from banks, the agriculture sector has been able to produce 1,620,000 metric tonnes of maize per annum, 391,000 metric tonnes of rice, 351,000 metric tonnes of sorghum, 113,000 metric tonnes of soya beans, 485,000 metric tonnes of groundnuts, and 12,231,000 metric tones of cassava,” the president noted.
On poultry, he said about 32,000,000 birds at 1.5 kilograms were produced amounting to 48,000 metric tonnes while there was low productivity for livestock and a fisheries deficit of 460,000 metric tonnes.
Ghana has 5 main agro-ecological zones. These include a rain forest, deciduous forest, transitional zone, coastal savannah and northern savannah.
With a total land area of 23,853,900 square kilometres and an agricultural land area of 13,628,179 square kilometres, Ghana’s land under cultivation is 5,300,000 square kilometers.