Correspondence from Upper East:
Traders in the Kassena-Nankana area who buy and sell paddy rice in commercial quantities have resorted to filling stations to dry and store the commodity due to the lack of facilities.
With the rice harvest season at its peak, these traders in the area are faced with the seasonal problem of finding facilities to dry and store the farm.
Though the Irrigation Company of Upper Region (ICOUR) operates a drying and storage facility at Navrongo, it is unable to contain the magnitude of rice produced seasonally.
The challenge has compelled traders and sometimes farmers to look for other alternatives including resorting to available spaces at the filling stations where they pay to use them.
Delphina Dimarah, who buys rice in large quantities for her clients in the southern cities told GhanaWeb that although using these spaces ease the challenge, it does not completely solve it as the floors are not built to dry and store rice.
She furthered that drying the rice at the filling stations exposed it to impurities such as stones and the rains which sometimes destroy it.
“The place is not properly made. If you dry because it’s not made for rice, it is not smooth so before you realize you are gathering stones as well into it (rice). When you dry your rice and it rains on it, it will also spoil it.” She told our correspondent Senyalah Castro.
Cynthia Akwodoba, who farms and also buy rice in large scale also shared similar concerns. According to her, the spaces the filling stations offer are not large enough to contain a lot of the rice at a time.
She said the floors of the filling stations are able to accommodate smaller quantities of the rice at a time, which was greatly affecting their work.
“The floors are not big enough for us to dry. So, you have to dry a bit before you dry another one. It (floor) can not take all at once so we dry bit by bit, if not there is no other way. This is the only way we have.”
The buyers have therefore appealed to the government to help address the challenge by providing facilities where they can dry and store the commodity. They explained that the provision of these facilities would help improve the rice production chain to curb post-harvest losses.
The rice buyers also raised issues of lack of financial assistance and appealed to the government to assist them with loan facilities to improve their business.
“Another challenge is that we don’t have money to invest in the business. As a young entrepreneur, I face a lot of financial challenges. So, if government can assist us with loans to use to finance our business, it will be very good.”