Food remains a basic need of man. Interestingly Nigeria is blessed with all it takes to get good harvests - human resources, arable land and massive water source; but unfortunately much of it is lost to pre and post-harvest challenges, Ruth Tene Natsa writes on the need to tackle post-harvest losses towards ensuring food security
Food is one of the basic needs of all living things and while man can survive without clothing and shelter which are other basic needs, man cannot survive without food. The need to ensure food security is one Nigeria must look into towards preserving the lives of citizens.
Post-harvest losses as the term implies are losses which occur to a farmer's produce after harvest. They are losses which occur between the time of harvest and the time of human consumption and can be divided into quantitative and qualitative losses. Whichever way the losses occur, it is usually a loss to the farmer in particular and the nation at large as the value of that produce depreciates.
Saddening also is the fact that while Nigeria records very high imports of produces, which though it can conveniently produce locally, local produces, exported are often rejected internationally as they fail to meet international standards required for export. While the nation pays heavily to import, it gains very little from the export of its produce, as such they all become losses after harvest.
These rejections are often caused by a number of factors including poor storage facilities, lack of processing facilities, poor or non-existing markets, transportation challenges and even lack of knowledge or capacity in food preservation, poor and inadequate power supply.
Nigeria is one country where fruits and vegetables grow in and out of season, but the problem of processing and preservation leads to post-harvest losses.
Post-harvest losses are caused by various factors including fruit pest diseases, poor preservation of harvested produces, poor transportation of harvested produces due to bad roads, lack of storage facilities such as cold rooms, silos and properly ventilated warehouses.
Records by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) have shown that as a result of poor or absence of good agricultural practices (GAP), and poor post-harvest handling, the acceptance of local products from Africa and other developing countries is very difficult. This is a big challenge to market development for local farmers.
According to the permanent secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr. Sonny Echono, post harvest losses have been estimated to range between five per cent and 20 per cent for grains, 20 per cent for fish and as high as 50-60 per cent for tubers, fruits and vegetable.
He said: "Horticultural crops because of their delicate nature face tremendous post-harvest challenges. In Nigeria specifically, tomatoes has the highest priorities with domestic demand of 2.3 million tonnes of fresh product annually, national production of 1.8 million tonnes, wastage of over 750.300 tonnes and import bill of N16 billion to make up for the short fall in local production
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