Provide roads in the farming areas - farmers to gov't

Accra, May 24, GNA - Government was on Thursday called upon to construct good roads in the areas that provided food for the nation. Mr Barnabas Sefa-Boakye, spokesman for the Asafo Market Co-operative Maize Producing and Marketing Society, in an interview with the GNA in Accra said it was unfortunate that the areas noted as food producing areas rather had most of the bad roads causing a lot of post-harvest losses.

"Farmers work hard to produce food but in the end we cannot get all of our foodstuffs to the market because of the nature of the roads in the areas that we produce the food.

"The roads in such areas are often not tarred, muddy, full of potholes and meander, making the trucks that cart the foodstuffs get stuck in the mud especially during the raining seasons," he said. Mr Sefa-Boakye expressed this sentiment when he led executives of the Asafo Market Co-operative Maize Producing and Marketing Society to present a proposal on how to secure post-harvest management of maize to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. He appealed to government as a matter of urgency to work on all the roads in areas noted as "the food basket" to minimise post-harvest losses.

"We lose a lot of money through spoilage when the trucks get stuck in the mud and we are appealing to government to assist us as farmers by providing us with good roads so that the foodstuffs could be sold at cheaper prices," he said.

Mr Sefa-Boakye also appealed to transport operators to send good trucks to cart foodstuffs since the only old and rickety ones that are sent there often breakdown on the road leading to further destruction of food items.

"Let us give meaning to the fact that Ghana is an agrarian economy by making the road networks in the farming areas motorable," he said. Mr. Kwaku Amoo-Baffoe, Deputy Director in-charge of Crops, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, assured the farmers of government's intention to ensure that all roads, especially those within farming communities were motorable all year round.

He said maize was the number one crop in Ghana followed by rice, so curbing post-harvest losses, which start right from the farms through transportation, to the market, was very crucial to government. "We lose a total of about 12 per cent of our maize production through post-harvest losses and the earlier we all join hands in curbing it the better we can assure the nation of food security," he told the farmers.

Mr. Amoo-Baffoe told the farmers to visit the Agricultural Information Centres established in all districts for assistance and information on how to secure loans and grants from government and other donors.

He also told them that government, realising that the number of Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) in the country was about one to about 3,000 farmers, recently employed some more to help them provide better services.

These AEAs, he noted, would be provided with motors and bicycles so that they would be able to reach the farms easily. He called on private investors to invest in warehousing to help minimise the post-harvest losses because a greater part of the maize was often lost through improper storage.