The Director General of RAB, Dr Patrick Karangwa says that there are strategies in place to tackle this problem including increasing the number of storage facilities, targeting to reduce post-harvest losses from 16% to 5% by 2024.
“The government has has planned to help farmers get adequate storage facilities in order to protect the produce from deterioration before it gets to the market and harvest warehouses,” he said.
Farmers also say the problem of inadequate post-harvest handling including drying yards and storage facilities results in produce quality deterioration and other losses.
Candide Nyiraminani a farmer from Northern Province says that poor maize drying facilities affects quality.
“We still have the problem of maize storage facilities. Maize storage facilities are still few and we cannot all afford drying facilities. Often, drying facilities are given to cooperatives and are not enough for them too.” She said.
She added that there are other farmers who think that some drying facilities are idle, but they are not able to make use of them because they are far from them.
She suggests that adequate drying facilities should be established in the areas where there are large fields of maize in order to better process the production instead of deteriorating or being simply lost.
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