Construction of warehouses will address harvest losses in the country – Minister

Dr Hafiz Bin Salih, Upper West Regional Minister, has said the challenge of Post-Harvest Losses (PHLs) in the country will become a thing of the past following the implementation of government’s “One-District-One-Warehouse” policy.

Dr Bin Salih said this while inspecting the construction of two warehouses at Bussie in the Daffiama-Bussie-Issa District and Han in the Jirapa Municipality. He urged farmers to increase production as there would be enough space for them to store their produce.

He said eight warehouses; four under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and six under the Ministry of Special Development Initiatives, would be completed by the end of 2019 for famers to store their produce against losses.

The Regional Minister said each of the warehouses have capacity of 1,000 metric tons, adding that after the completion of these projects, government would award the construction of more till each district had a warehouse as stated in the policy.

He said government was committed to the full implementation of the policy in to help ensure the reduction of post-harvest losses.

Mr Emmanuel Sasu Yeboah, Upper West Regional Director of Agriculture, said under the Infrastructure for Poverty Reduction Programme, government is putting up these warehouses with the intention to store farmers produce.

He said this initiative is good because since the introduction of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJs) programme, the region has been experiencing bumper harvest with farmers struggling for space to store their produce.

“Last year some aggregators bought a lot of sorghum but where to store them before transporting them to Guinness Ghana was a problem – so we want farmers to have places to store their produce while waiting for prices to appreciate so they can sell”, he said.

Mr Yeboah said a warehouse receipting system would be introduced so that farmers could even take advantage of their effort as collateral to do business.

He said once a farmer presented the receipt and the business partner gets to know that he or she has this number of bags of produce safe in the warehouse, the business partner would be willing to do business with the farmer.

He said last year, a total of 117,000 farmers subscribed to the PFJ programme in the region, adding that this year, the number has increased to over 120,000 farmers and production is expected to increase tremendously.