The Savannah Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI) had trained some smallholder farmers in the Sissala East Municipality on harvesting and post-harvest management of cereals as part of efforts to reduce post-harvest losses.
A total of 122 farmers from the Nankpawei, Kong, Chinchang and Sakai communities in the Municipality participated in the training during a field day to a sorghum field at the Nankpawei community.
The CSIR-SARI organised the training with support from Maylotte International aimed at strengthening the capacity and capability of smallholder farmers in various stages of cereal production.
Addressing the farmers at the field on his behalf by Mr Haruna K. Ali, a Chief Technician at the CSIR-SARI, Dr Francis Kusi, the Director of the CSIR-SARI, said the training was to help address challenges such as food waste, food security and climate change through adopting post-harvest technology.
He observed that food security was becoming a major challenge in Ghana partly due to food waste as a result of poor post-harvest handling of cereals.
He said food insecurity posed a high risk of malnutrition to the country saying, “A malnourished society is an ailing society, and an ailing society cannot develop itself.”
Dr Kusi expressed the hope that the training would enable farmers to understand post-harvest losses in order to ensure effective post-harvest management.
The farmers were taken through seed selection and its maturity period; planting time; weed control; fertilizer application; insect and pest control; harvesting time; post-harvest handling and methods of drying and storage.
They were also introduced to some existing improved varieties of sorghum and the most recent sorghum variety, Atokple -chi, released in 2024 by the CSIR-SARI, which were on demonstration.
Mr Ali, also the Head of Section for On-farm Agronomy stationed in Tumu in the Sissala East Municipality, explained that the Atokple chi had better traits, especially with its open heads, which made it friendly for commercial production as compared to the existing sorghum varieties that had compart heads.
The Research Scientist indicated that they had planned to start commercial production of the Atokple chi in the next planting season.
Mr Ali, therefore, encouraged farmers to adopt and utilise the Atokple chi so as to increase their yields and raise their income levels.
Mr Waaza Majeed, the Lead Farmer on the project, on behalf of the participating communities, thanked CSIR-SARI for its intervention in the area of sorghum production and said farmers would strive to adopt and use the improved sorghum variety and implement the lessons learnt from the field visit to enhance their farming activities.
