EU co-funded project on post-harvest losses ends

The Research for Devel­opment Innovation Agriculture and Learning (ReDIAL) projects which is aimed at supporting small holder grain and cereal farmers in the country to boost food production, has ended.

The four-year project, co-funded by the European Union (EU) under the De­Sira initiative ReDIAL was implemented in Ghana’s major food producing zones to help address post-harvest losses in the grain and cereal farming sector.

The beneficiary food pro­ducing zones are Techiman in the Bono East Municipal, Ejura in the Ejura Sekyedu­mase District of the Ashanti Region, Yendi in the North­ern Region, Sefwi Wiawso in the Western North Region and Donkorkrom in the Kwahu Afram Plains North District of the Eastern Region.

As part of the project, ReDIAL focused on provid­ing innovative agricultural solutions to small holder grains and cereal farmers, particularly the marginal­ised, in Ghana’s major food producing zones.

The project, over the implementation period introduced the multi crop threshers to over (11500) small holder farmers in the five project zones, thresh­ing 330,200 kilograms of high-quality grains for almost 1000 farmers (i.e. maize, cowpea, rice and beans) at no cost to them.

This initiative significantly contributed to reduction in post-harvest grain losses in these zones for small holder and marginalised farmers and eliminated the laborious manual threshing which in many cases involved children with poor quality output.

Beneficiary farmers were also introduced to Farm Sense Soil Testing technol­ogy, a technology which instantly measured the fertility status of a farmer’s land cleared for cultivation, and provides figures on the status of nitrogen, phospho­rus and potassium levels.

The coordinator of the ReDIAL project and Exec­utive Director of Friends of the Nation, Donkris Mevuta, emphasised that the introduction and testing of FarmSense technology yielded a critical insight.

“As the project closes out, a total of GH¢125, 000 worth of assets are being handed over to post ReDI­AL management committees in each of the five project zones,” Mevuta stated.

The assets, he stated include 10 multicrop thresh­ers, (15) portable farm sense soil testing kits, and five public address systems.

ReDIAL was imple­mented by a consortium of five partners, made up of Friends of the Nation as the lead partner, Tropenbos Ghana, the Kwame Nkru­mah University of Science and Technology, Sesi Tech­nologies and SAYeTECH.

BY KINGSLEY ASARE