The Executive Director of the Center for Climate Change and Food Security (CCCFS), Mahmud Mohammed Nurudeen is worried over the rate at which many Ghanaian youth are abandoning their farm lands and rushing to city centres in search of non-existing jobs.
According to him, many Ghanaian youth who have spent years and months looking for scarce white colour jobs could have been better off if they had stayed or gone into farming or any other form of Agriculture.
Mahmud Mohammed-Nurudeen however, blamed successive governments for not creating conducive environment and value chain structure to protect gains in the Agriculture Sector, which he believes could be a reason why the youth are not interested in farming.
“Ghana over the years has done well in production, but we have not done well in the area of storage and processing for later use. About 40 percent of food stuff produced in Ghana go waste and this is bad and therefore will not courage people to stay in or go into farming.”
The Executive Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Food Security was speaking in an interview on A1 Radio based in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region.
Mahmud Mohammed-Nurudeen wants government to intensify its efforts and investment into the construction of Warehouses in the Districts to provide storage spaces for farmers and institutions that buy food from farmers to store food for later use.
“We are doing well in production, and with the recent introduction of the Planting for Food and Jobs, there has been an increase in food production. The problem now is that, if we are getting more food and we are not able to get the food distributed across the country for more people to buy them, we will end up losing more of the food we produce. Provision of warehouses and effective distribution of food across the country for people to buy are some surest ways of curbing post harvest loses.” He said.
Touching on Climate Change, the Executive Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Food Security, said many Ghanaian lifestyles have contributed and still contributing to the changes being experienced in the Climate.
“Carbon Dioxide from Vehicles to a large extend can be blamed for Climate Change, unfortunately in Ghana, we love to travel and drive around in our individual cars, not mass transport, thereby producing more Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere. There is also the case of our food stuff getting rotten, because we don’t distribute them widely for more people to buy the food we produce and also we are not able to store or process. Rotten food produce Methane into the atmosphere.” He noted.
According to foodwastexperts.com, rotten food accounts for 34 percent of all Methane emissions, and it is 20 times more damaging to the environment than Carbon Dioxide.
Per this information you can image the volume of Methane we produce into the atmosphere, as food stuff rot on farms and market squares.
Source: a1radioonline.com/ 101.1MHz/ Ghana
