Nearly 80 thousand small farmers of the entire province of Tete and part of the districts of Manica, Zambézia and Nampula may benefit until 2024 from an intervention action of the World Food Program (WFP), aiming at reducing post-harvest losses.
This is the second stage of the “Zero Post-Harvest Losses” initiative, which basically consists in the use of hermetic storage technology bags in the preservation of vegetables and dry cereals, in addition to preparing the small farmer in the use of market-based response strategies.
The program was launched last Friday in Tete City by the provincial governor, Domingos Viola, who positively evaluated the project’s test phase, which ran from 2018 to 2022, in the districts of Angónia, Macanga, Changara, Tsangano and Cahora Bassa.
“In the pilot phase of the initiative, more than 32,000 farmers in our province saw the loss of their production reduced from 50% to 9%, in addition to increasing their income. This result encourages us to continue with this type of action”, he considered.
Domingos Viola warned that the threat of production loss forces farmers to sell their produce immediately after harvest, at low prices, and then buy at high values during the lean season.
The governor encouraged the local private sector to engage, saying that they can play an important role in providing bags of airtight storage technology. For her part, Berguete Mariquele, program officer at PMA, stressed that the initiative will prioritize women.
