By Isaac UK (Orpahmaylah)
Our locally produced food items over the years have not yielded for us what a successful producer could testify about the appreciable yields of his or her agricultural output. By the look of things, the quantity of produce that couldn’t reach the consumer because of spoilage would amount to a good cash loss for the farmer. Therefore, the need to correct the trend to save needed income for farmers is timely.
A good quantity of harvested agricultural produce by our people has been a loss to the farmer, or both the retailer and wholesaler of the products. The freshness of the harvested produce gets lost a few days after harvest, leading to spoilage and eventually causing severe losses to farmers. There is no provision or facility to upkeep the freshness of the produce; vegetables and fruits are the fastest produce to spoil in a short period of time after harvest and, as such, become stale and spoiled.
Our capital city of Freetown, where a bulk quantity of our upcountry agricultural products are brought for sale, is yet to be seen with a facility meant to preserve the freshness of those products. If there had been such a facility for that purpose, one can say it’s no longer there because there is no evidence of its existence.
Nearly a good quantity of all the locally produced food items have to get spoilt and thrown away after they reach the market stalls, where the final consumers could buy them off. Some get stalled and staled on the way to the market in unprotected vehicles, especially when a vehicle has a breakdown on the way to the market. This is happening every year to the extent that piles of spoilage will be seen being gathered on roads and can even cut off some road networks on our central produce markets.
This has caused consumers to live on stale food that could lead to diseases like cholera and dysentery, among others. For a very long time, our health workers have yet to tell us of a disease outbreak due to the unhygienic or stale foods we eat from our local markets. The harvest periods of mango and orange fruits have been indicating a good quantity of spoilage fruits every year.
There is, however, an obvious loss of finances that the farmer and the distributor of the fruits have to undergo that can’t be recovered. The circle keeps on every year inasmuch as there is no appropriate facility for crop storage that would be able to preserve the freshness of the fruits. So one can imagine the amount of money that has gone down the drains over the years due to the spoilage of our local produce!
A cold room is the ideal place to store, preserve, and package one’s products to prolong their lives and help prevent spoilage and the growth of bacteria.
There are a wide range of benefits a cold storage room can provide to our fruit farmers and marketers. There are also benefits to investing in a cold room for our local produce business. Cold rooms have a range of uses, as they can be designed and built as chillers, freezers, or ambient areas, depending on the required temperature range and the purpose the cold rooms are being used for.
For example, creating ambient rooms with temperature control by using our existing market areas would allow local business people to benefit from a consistently refrigerated room while also being able to prepare their products there simultaneously.
Why should we keep throwing away food or products that spoil because we don’t store them correctly? Cold rooms can help us save money as business people by keeping spoilage levels to a minimum. This is due to the consistent temperature levels that a cold room can maintain. For example, a cold room can keep fruits and vegetables at the correct temperature while also controlling the moisture level to help extend the life of the fresh produce until it can be used, minimising waste and therefore saving money.
Private or public firms can invest in this without much forethought on how they would get profit in return. This is because farmers and wholesalers of produce would appreciate a provision that would accommodate and preserve the freshness and taste of their food, which would enable them to do steady sales rather than see their spoilage, which would cost them their much-needed finances or profit. Investors only need to provide a conducive and accommodating reception for their customers to win their confidence in engaging the cold storage in a good business trust relationship that will make customers prefer the advantage of continuing with the storage provision and not incurring the loss of anticipated profit due to spoilage of their products. It’s a virgin and promising business arena where Investors can engage a make exploits.
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