Farmers in Kano have expressed their excitement over the unveiling of new techniques to help curtail post-harvest losses.
This is coming after most farmers had recorded major losses during this year’s wet season farming following the abrupt end of the rainy season, which affected the growth of many farm produce.
Kano/Jigawa Chronicle reports that findings by agricultural experts showed that more than half of farm produce are usually lost due to continuous adherence to primitive ways during harvesting processes by many farmers.
In view of this, the Kano State Agro-Pastoral Development Project (KSADP) held a sensitisation workshop for farmers across some selected local government areas in Kano State on the need to minimise post-harvest losses usually incurred during harvest for effective agribusiness in the state.
One of the benefiting farmers, Malam Shitu Inuwa, said most of them did not know that the reason behind their low harvest was not as a result of the yield but the processes involved in harvesting the farm produce.
Another farmer, Alhaji Bello Bala Isiye, said the workshop could not have come at a better time and thanked the organizers.
He explained that the workshop made them to understand that they had been wasting their produce unknowingly.
In his address on behalf of other participating farmers, Malam Nasir Mohammed, said the workshop was the best thing that had ever happened to them adding that there was a need for the participants to step down the skills to save other farmers against post-harvest losses.
The Country Director of Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) Professor Sani Miko, said that it was disheartening to notice that after several months of toiling on the farm, farmers could not get what they ought to have gotten due to some practices that encourage post-harvest losses.
He said SAA as a partner felt that there was a need to come to the rescue of the farmers by equipping them with new techniques and processes to minimise post- harvest losses as well as to increase their output, which invariably translates to a good business.
He explained that the sensitisation workshop was conducted under the agricultural development project with funding from Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD) and Lives and Livelihood Fund (LLF).
