The day's event, which took place at Yendi, was organised by the Yendi Municipal Department of Agriculture as part of efforts to ensure sustainable food and income security among smallholder farmers in the area.

It was attended by officials from the central administration of the Yendi Municipal Assembly, the Departments of Agriculture and Health, and representatives of FBOs, aggregators and civil society organizations in the Municipality.

They were taken through best practices along the various stages in PHL, which included harvesting, threshing, drying, on and off farm storage, marketing and distribution.

Mr Issahaku Yabdow, Yendi Municipal Crop Officer, who spoke during the workshop, said the choice of the crops for the training was based on field level data on losses along the value chain of those major crops in the Municipality.

Mr Yabdow established that PHL among the selected crops were 20 per cent in maize, 30% in soybean, 20% in rice and 30% cowpea and said it was on a downward trend.

He emphasized that PHL among smallholder farmers were recorded at field and storage levels and urged the participants to adopt the best practices for improved incomes.

Madam Sandra Mensah, Gender Programmes Manager of Northern Development Society (NORDESO), emphasised that the exposure of farmers to available PHL technologies was critical to adoption and not necessarily cost, because some farmers could indeed afford them.

Madam Mensah was making a presentation on the topic: "Tackling Post-Harvest Loss among Smallholder Farmers in Ghana: The Adoption of Cost Effective Technologies and Innovations".

She emphasised that PHL technologies and practices could only lead to development impact if they were communicated and implemented by farmers and end-users through effective extension schemes, which was a key function of government.

She spoke about four cost effective technologies that had been scientifically evaluated, which included hermetic storage bags, metal silos for storage, cooling chamber and "Bambam" Box as published in International Food Policy Research Institute (2018) working paper for dissemination under the Voice for Change Partnership Programme.

She said "Studies have found that farmers, who sold immediately post-harvest and were forced to buy in the lean season, at an average, lost equivalent to 29.3 per cent of the value of their grain sales, owing to seasonal price fluctuations".

She, therefore, advised farmers to adopt PHL technologies that would maintain their produce quality over a longer period to take advantage of increase in prices over time.

Madam Mensah emphasised the need for FBOs to be well organised and credit worthy to attract private sector investment and be able to demand accountability from government for better service delivery.

She added that Wumpini Agrochemicals Company and Trust Narrow Organisation were committed to discount at 10% and 15% of PHL products in their dealerships respectively to organized FBOs in the Yendi Municipality under NORDESO's influence.

Mr Gaspard Dery, Yendi Municipal Coordinating Director, commended the Department of Agriculture for the initiative, saying food availability in the right quality and quantity harvested was essential to boost the income of smallholder farmers as well as the nutritional status of the general consuming public.

Mr Mark Atoobey, Yendi Municipal Nutrition Officer, advised farmers not to focus exclusively on production for the market, but also consume the variety of crops including fruits, vegetables and small livestock like fowls they produced at household to boost their nutritional status.