Ghana needs to improve the processing of agriculture produce to curb potential losses which costs $2 billion dollars annually, the 2018 national best farmer, James Boateng has said.
On the Citi Breakfast Show, he urged more Ghanaians to venture into processing agricultural products to reduce the impact of post-harvest losses.
“We don’t have the capacity store simply because we don’t add a lot of value,” he remarked
We get these post-harvest losses “simply because we simply can’t sell what we produce.”
“There are huge issues with post-harvest losses. If you talk to the experts, they tell you that so much of what we do, especially in agriculture gets wasted. Everything from mango to vegetables and even maize.”
“So we could have anything from 10 to 40 percent of output and the entire agriculture value chain can generate something close to $5 billion and if you have even 10 percent wasting, that is a lot of money,” Mr. Boateng said.
Post-harvest losses have been a major stumbling block to agriculture in subsaharan Africa, especially in the face of climate change.
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates from 2011 suggest that as much as 37 percent of food produced in Sub-Saharan Africa is lost between production and consumption.
Fruit and vegetable losses are estimated to be 50 percent or more and are considered cumulative because losses occur at every stage of the supply chain; from production to the consumption.
Mr. Boateng was speaking on the maiden edition of the on-air series for this year’s Citi Business Festival which has started with a focus on agribusiness.