Improving our food stock

Our farmers have very effective ways of storing their harvest except that modern technologies have undermined their efforts to sustain the appropriate methods.

Many years ago, the only means by which our farmers were able to avoid post-harvest losses was to build barns for cereals and tubers like yams.

Yam for instance is a very perishable food crop but our local farmers are able to store it till the next planting season and sell the surplus to maintain their household.

The farmers also built  barns at the farm gates to store maize and they use the simple  method of providing fire consistently under the ban to ward off weevils.

Ghana is not lacking in its ability to feed the people. The challenge lies in the how to protect the tonnes of food crops against the vagaries of the weather and insects to reduce post-harvest losses.

Fortunately, we  have built institutional capacities to be able to provide more information and knowledge about how to keep the food crops we have produced for our up keep and for export.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has bodies under it that have adequate technological know-how to deal with the challenges of our development.

Many of the research findings that can help ease the burdens of society are gathering dust on shelves in the CSIR. It is sad that we have failed to realise that the CSIR on its own cannot apply these findings.

That is why there is the need for linkages between research and industry, be it in agriculture, health, education and business so that these findings can be operationalised for the good of mankind.

The Daily Graphic thinks that it was in this vein that the Director-General of the CSIR, Dr Abdullai Salifu, advocated the use of research findings as a means of ending the country’s perennial post-harvest losses.

According to him, the CSIR had over the years conducted extensive research that had revealed the causes and possible solutions to post harvest losses that had resulted in a shortfall in revenue and food stock.

All we can say to this revelation by Dr Salifu is to state that he has been spot . But we shall walk the talk if we are  able to find a way out of this challenge  to increase productivity in agriculture.

We concede that the traditional way of storing food crops and fish cannot work well in this era of increased population that we need mass production of everything in order to meet the demands of the market.

Our worry, however, is that we have not been able to use the technology available to us to increase food yield or protect the production so that we do not go to the international community to beg for food hand outs.

Sometimes, we feel insulted by the quantum of aid that is extended to us but we grab the opportunity with glee because we do not have a choice.

That we do not have a choice is an imposition by the development option we  adopted.

The Daily Graphic has always insisted on the fact that there is no room for autarky  but we must be mindful of the dangers in unbridled liberalisation and initiate policies that protect local production.

Today, the CSIR is a pale shadow of the institution that the late Dr Kwame Nkrumah envisaged it to be; the body to spearhead the revolution in science and technology to bring Ghana out of poverty to become a big player on the global economic stage.

The Daily Graphic, therefore, calls on the government to resource the CSIR to rediscover its mandate to change the development  process by providing the answers to the issues that retard our progress.