Market women adopt new technology to eliminate post-harvest losses

Market women in major market centers in the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions of Ghana have adopted the use of a new storage technology called “Purdue Improved Crop Storage bags (PICS bags) aimed at eliminating post-harvest losses for an enhanced food security and poverty reduction.

The PICS bag which is produced by the Purdue University in the United States of America was introduced to the smallholder farmers by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Nigeria in collaboration with its local partners including the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA Ghana), Presby Agric Services (PAS), Rural Education and Agriculture Development International (READI) and PRONET.

The use of the bag is now seen by agricultural experts and the farmers as the most cost effective but trusted way of storing grains such as maize, beans, cowpea, groundnuts and rice to eliminate post-harvest loses, which has been a major challenge facing small holder farmers in Ghana and the rest of Africa.

Statistics indicate that close to 70% of grains harvested from the farm are mostly destroyed by weevils or bruchids within the first three months of storage. Even though the crops are stored or preserved with certain chemicals, they still do not stand the test of time.

It was against this backdrop, that the Purdue University in the United States of America introduced the PICS bags to provide a simple, effective low-cost method of reducing post-harvest losses in cereal due to insect infestations in west and central Africa.

The PICS bag is made of two layers of polyethylene bags surrounded by a third layer of woven polypropylene, thereby creating a hermetically sealed environment in which harvested crops are stored. This oxygen-deprived environment proves fatal for insects and bruchids and prevents them from causing harm to the stored grains.

The Bag can store grains for more years because there is no air space for the survival of weevils to cause damage to the produce.



During an interaction at the Aboabo Market in Tamale in the Northern Region, a prominent maize aggregator, Mrs Martha Azaare who has been using the PICS bags for the last three years to store her food produce attested to its efficacy and encouraged other food vendors to adopt the PICS bags to avoid the excessive use of chemicals which she said is very harmful to the lives of people.

“Normally, “if you store maize or beans without any chemicals, it will not even reach two months and all the foodstuffs are completely destroyed by the weevils. Sometimes, even if you put chemicals they (weevils) will still destroy some of the food after some time but am really surprised to see that we stored this food without any chemicals for over six months now yet the maize and cowpea are all looking as new as they were first stored. I am very delighted to see this,” she said.

She therefore appealed to the stakeholders involved in the production and distribution of the bags to ensure that the bags will continue to be in supply and will be accessible to farmers in remote areas so that other farmers too can benefit from this new technology.

Mrs. Stella Mensah, a farmer and food seller at the Techiman Market in the Brong Ahafo region also confirmed the efficacy of the PICS bag after she and other farmers who had used the bags to store their foodstuff for over six months saw the results when they finally opened their bags at the ceremony.

According to Mrs. Mensah, she has been farming maize and cowpea for over twenty years and her major constraint over the years has been how to effectively store her produce. But the PICS bags she said seemed to bring answers to her problems. Two other market women who spoke to mynewsgh.com, Baaba Yirenkyi and Christiana Mahama all food aggregators in the Techiman market said that they used to experience post-harvest losses even with the use of chemicals for the storage of their produce.

At a separate but similar ceremony at Abusua Paadier, a farming community in the Dormaa West district of the Brong Ahafo region the Dormaa West district best rice farmer for 2015, Mr. Johnson Opoku also advised farmers in the country especially those who produce cereal crops to adopt the Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags for storing their farm produce after harvest since this bag has proven to be the most effective storage system available so far.

According to Mr. Opoku, he has been farming maize, cowpea and rice for over twenty years and his major constraint over the years has been how to effectively store his produce. But the introduction of the PICS bags, he said, seemed to be the final answer to the perennial problem of storage losses.

The “open the bag” ceremony is an outdoor event where PICS bags which had been used to store grain volunteered by selected farmers in communities for at least six months are then opened in the full glare of the public to ascertain the efficacy or otherwise of the bags.

During the over seven hundred ceremonies carried out in all the one thousand communities in the five regions where the project took place in Ghana, there have been no reports of a single infected bag after the opening representing a hundred percent success story for the project in Ghana.

The PICS 3 project is a Bill and Melinda Gate’s foundation sponsored initiative introduced by the Purdue University based in the USA. The project is being implemented in Ghana alongside other African countries including Nigeria, Burkina Faso in West Africa; Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia in East Africa; and Malawi in Southern Africa.

PICS technology was developed in the late 1980s by Prof. Larry Murdock of Purdue University with support from partners in northern Cameroon with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the technology was introduced into Africa in 2007 with efforts under the initial PICS program focusing on using the technology to store only cowpea. This initial phase of the project covered ten countries across west and central Africa including Ghana. However, research presently shows that the technology is as effective in all other cereal crops as it has been for cowpea hence the reintroduction of the project to ensure that all other cereal crops are saved during storage from weevil infestation.