‘Electricity, Bane Of Food Preservation Research’

The officer in-charge, Nigerian Stored Products Research Institute, NSPRI, South-South and South Eastern states of Nigeria, Mr Simon Robert says that inadequate supply of electricity was a major factor militating against progressive and sustained research into food preservation and storage in the country.

Mr Robert who stated this in an exclusive interview in his office recently in Port Harcourt with The Tide explained that although emphasis was now placed on crude oil for the economic needs of the country, some Nigerians were still into agriculture.

He said unfortunately these farmers who were mainly from the Northern part of the country and partly from the middle belt, South West, South East and South South were faced with problems of preservation and storage of their harvested crops.

He explained that this situation has often led to food wastages occassioned by pests insects moulds and crude methods of transporting food items from one region of the country to the other items from one region of the country to the other.

According to Mr Robert who is an industrial chemist, the mandate of NSPRI was to device ways and means toward the effective preservation and storage of all kinds of crops and vegetables for their availability at any given time of the year.

“And so what we do here is to see that we preserve and store all these foods so that pests and other wastage of food in the society is prevented and controlled to make for food abundance in the society.

“At any given time in the season or in the year, to be able to have one commodity or the other, because there are some seasonal food like mangoes, pineapple, orange, all these things are seasonal” he explained.

He said that so long as farmers and market women and men adhere to the professional advice given to them by NSPRI, the likelihood of the availability of food all the year round could not be ruled out.

“But if you now preserve all these food items in the way we have adviced people to preserve them, we will be having all these things (food) available all the year round”, he counseled.

Mr Robert stressed that agriculture could not be separated from preservation and storage and warned that any venture into agriculture without consideration for preservation and storage was bound to fail.

He explained that it was due to inadequate application of preservation and storage methods that most seasonal foods like corn, oranges, tomatoes and their like were mass consumed at their season leading to scarcity of such products on the short run.

“Now we are all struggling to eat corn or maize. When you go over there they are roasting and cooking corn.

“So they have almost finished everything, then at the end of the day, the cost of corn will be very high.

“And you know, when the cost of corn becomes high, even to the poultry farmer corn will be high and this will certainly affect the price of chicken. These are some of the situations we in NSPRI are trying to reverse”, he added.

He listed some of the products available to farmers and traders to include, fish driver, which he said has the capacity of drying an average of six cartons of iced fish within an interval of three to four hours, plastic ventilated crates for transporting and storing perishable crops like tomato, oranges paw-paw and vegetables.

On the challenges facing the organisation, Mr Robert listed them to include in-accessable terrain of the riverine areas of the zone, inability of farmers to buy their own fabricated preservative items due  to lack of funds and poor funding from government.

Also speaking, the agricultural extension officer, Mr Samuel Duru urged local government chairmen to avail themselves of the opportunity available by sending their staff for training in order to make the technology of storage and preservation get to the grassroot level.

If chairmen of local government areas in the state organize their people well, if will drastically reduce the wastages experienced at that level especially during seasonal harvesting of crops like corn, mango, pineapple  and other agricultural products that were identified with the areas”, he added.