Post harvest losses in root and tuber production to be reversed
Accra, June 21, GNA – Measures are being instituted to ensure that roots and tuber crops like yam and cassava which suffer between 30-60 per cent post-harvest losses in the society are reversed and sustained.
The losses occur mainly through their processing leading to losses in their economic value, quality and disregard for the bio-waste.
As part of strategies to ensure success and the sustainability of these crops a four-day training workshop on its value chain has began to equip and inform stakeholders on new developments in the industry.
The four day training which ends tomorrow June 22 is being held at the conference room of Food Research Institute in Accra.
The project dubbed gains from losses of roots and tuber crops is on the theme: “Reducing Post – Harvest Losses for Increased Security” and it is being undertaken in collaboration with Natural Resources Institute (NRI) –UK, CSIR-Food Research Ghana, University of Agriculture, (UNAAB).
Cassava, yam and other roots and tuber crops are increasingly becoming important in the food systems of many developing countries and food security crops for about 700 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa.
With root and tuber crops production steadily increasing from 688 metric tonnes in 2001 to 740 million tonnes in 2007, and the world's production of cassava and yam at 228 and 52 million metric tonnes respectively, these could become a viable panacea to poverty alleviation and food security in developing countries.
Mr Ben Bennett, Head of Food and Markets Development of NRI, in an interview with Ghana News Agency, said the workshop would look at the reduction of physical losses by focusing on fresh yam storage, value added processing by reducing physical and economic losses in yam and cassava and improved utilisation of wastes (peels, liquid waste, spent brewery waste) to produce products for human consumption and animal feed.
This, he said, had been successful in South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam and expressed the hope that it would work for Ghana and Nigeria.
The objective of project, Mr Bennett said, is ultimately to improve the post-harvest management of cassava and yams and help reduce the physical and economic losses through value-added processing and valorisation of waste.
It is expected, he said, that the reduction in these three identified types of losses and the transformation of roots and tubers into various forms for food, feed, and industrial raw material would have the potential to enhance the role that these crops play in food and income security in the society.
He said it could also create additional value in rural settings, generate income and employment and develop a more favourable balance of trade for the nation.
Mr Bennett said cassava and yam only differ in terms of their sale as fresh produce, storage and processing and that the key approach is to address both the technical and socio- economic aspect by developing entrepreneurial capacities of small and medium scale enterprises.
He said such capacities ought to be developed to manage the output (produce), explore market potentials and manage their profit and thereby improve their livelihood.
GNA