Abubakar K. Mommoh
2 July 2009
Abuja — A food scientist has asked the Standards Organization of Nigeria to begin standardizing agricultural produce to enhance their competitiveness and to promote investment.
Director of the College of Technology, Kaduna Polytechnic, Mr. M. O Obafunmi made this plea in a presenttion at a seminar organized by the Nigerian Institute of Food Science and Technology, North central chapter on food security and the 7-point Agenda, recently in Kaduna.
Obafunmi noted that no standard had been developed for Nigerian food crops like the manufacturing sector, adding that such standardization should include grading, storage requirements, and quality of produce, loss assessment procedures, instrumentation and equipment infrastructure as well as minimum level of education for food vendors.
He said, "standard will not only uplift the dietary status of crops consumed in the country but also provide farm inputs to manufacturers, farmers and storage as well as food merchants with a basis for calculating market potentials of various foods thus promoting investment at all levels of the agricultural production- marketing consumption process."
The director added that the exercise will prepare Nigerian agricultural products for international markets while calling on the Food science and technology experts to champion the cause.
He said post harvest losses are significant in that time and money were required to cultivate food products adding that total losses from various stages was between 49 to 82% during postharvest systems. He said researchers, scholars and practitioners in the country have evolved and developed several methods and facilities aimed at reducing post harvest losses.
Stressing the need for adequate manpower development for post harvest activities to matched with updating curriculum to produce skilled manpower, the chief lecturer noted that the syllabus of the polytechnic sector on agricultural produce for industrial use was inadequate, concentrating on secondary processing and leaving out the primary stages where losses occur most. He said for the polytechnic graduates of food and science technology to fit into the entire post harvest systems, it was imperative to review the current curriculum.
Obafunmi said research institute concerned with postharvest needed to be expanded in scope and supported with adequate funding to go into pilot scale and commercial manufacturing of their research efforts as well as making models of their post harvest systems.
The National Institute for Food science and Technology must continue to impress on government to allow its financing policy to cover all stages of post harvest activities such as providing incentives aimed at reducing losses, he said.
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