Meet Patience Kpeda, The Passionate Extension Officer Addressing Post-Harvest Losses In Rural Ghana

Patience Kpeda is a 33-year-old woman who works as an Agriculture Extension Officer in the Denkyembour District of the Eastern Region. The mother of one who has been working in this capacity for the past nine years discovered that there’s a very high level of post-harvest losses among the small-scale farmers she works with.

This means, these farmers after painfully engaging in the hard labour, usually struggle to bounce back in most farming seasons. For Madam Kpeda, it will be incomplete to teach farmers on the best agriculture practices about increasing their yields when they do not know modern ways of increasing the lifespan of their farm produce after harvest. According to her, failure to educate farmers on how to deal with post-harvest losses and get better income will further deepen food insecurity threats in Ghana as these farmers are likely to reduce their farm sizes or fold up due to the high cost of farm inputs.

Already, Ghana is part of the African countries experiencing climate change and its threat of food insecurity. Despite the fact that the rural areas are the food basket of the country, it is estimated that 18.2 percent of Ghana’s rural population is food insecure. Out of this figure, 7.3 percent are severely food insecure, and 10.9 percent are moderately food insecure.

In an attempt to address the situation in the communities she serves, the Agric Extension Officer founded the Post-Harvest Women Foundation, a farmer-based group in rural communities of the Denkyembour District of the Eastern Region. Patience Kpeda empowers women through capacity-building training, particularly on climate-smart agriculture, to increase food production and proper storage techniques for longer lifespan.

Speaking to the host of the Ghanaian Farmer TV Show, Enyonam Manye, she indicated that the foundation is focusing on women because they’re usually involved in the post-harvest stage of farming as they go to nearby market centres to sell the produce.

In collaboration with her donors, she organises trainings for the women, numbering over 80 on how to properly use hermetic storage bags and temperature testing kits. She mostly donates these items to the women to store their grains. She focuses more on grains because it is highly consumed in Ghana and therefore, giving them longer lifespan will lead to value for money as well as adequate food supply in Ghana.

Meanwhile, the brilliant gesture from the Extension Officer is not without challenges. Patience Kpeda told Enyonam that finance is major setback to the work she does with Post-Harvest Women Foundation. Even though she had a few donors, she mostly provides funds for foundation’s activities from her personal income which is a threat to the sustainability of the project and also being able to expand the membership of the group.

Her source of transport to the communities is a motorbike which she said is not fit for purpose. “It frequently breaks down due to the bad nature of the roads especially during the rainy seasons,” she told Enyonam, Host of The Ghanaian Farmer TV Show. Another problem she faces is that the accessories of the motorbike are not readily available. Also, in situations where she’s supposed to go to a farm with another passenger sitting behind, an additional safety helmet is not provided because she currently has only one. Transport is a major challenge in the areas she serves and so motorbikes are the only reliable source.

Patience Kpeda is therefore appealing to philanthropists, corporate organisations and individuals to support her organisation in its quest to address post-harvest losses and contribute to food security in Ghana.