Sweetpotato: the next food security crop

The production of sweetpotato in Ghana is less than 20 percent of targeted production levels, mainly hindered by perception that the crop is food for poor people.

But the role of sweetpotato is becoming more important and substantial in fostering household food and nutrition diversification.

The orange-fleshed sweetpotato varieties, for instance, can contribute to combating Vitamin A Deficiency and can also serve as wheat flour substitute in processed products.

Interest groups in food and agriculture want sweetpotato to be seen as the next crop the country should be projecting, due the potentials in food security and industrial value addition, as well as its growing export demand.

“If you link up the future of potato and starch in general to the car industry, you realize that even an over production can be mopped up by the vehicle industry, because they can use most of that material to build the dashboards that you so comfortably want to sit in,” observed Joseph Faalong, a director at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

He however says there is the need to raise the productivity of potato higher, by creating interest in the business potentials of sweet potato production, especially among the youth.

“To do potato on a large scale, we need to devise mechanisms for lifting the crop. If we as researchers can look more into mechanical harvesters, machinery that can lift the crop on a large scale, then we’ll be doing a lot of justice to productivity,” he added.

The International Sweetpotato Centre (CIP), in collaboration with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), is running a training of trainers’ course on “Everything You Need to Know About Sweet Potato”.

Project Coordinator, Dr. Ibok Oduro of the KNUST, noted there are business opportunities along the sweetpotato value chain; from planting to marketing and processing of the crop.

“Sweet potato gives a variety of avenues for people to create business and that is why we think the training of trainers will empower them to be able to do such things,” she said, adding breeders are developing seed varieties that are resistant to diseases and also looking at machines for peeling sweet potatoes for industrial attraction.

The Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the CSIR has developed and released 12 high yielding sweetpotato varieties, which yield 2-3 times higher than the traditional varieties.

Dr. Oduro is encouraging Ghanaians to particularly look at potato leaf production as a viable agricultural venture.

“With sweet potato, within four months to five months you harvest; so it means three times in a year, you have something to sell… the leaf is very rich in anti-oxidants,” she said.

CIP has been working to promote sweet potato in Ghana, through partnerships with local institutions on post-harvest handling, techniques in breeding systems

“Sweet potato was an orphaned crop but now with the training, we are opening the mind of people on how we can use and harness sweetpotato like other crops,” said Putri Ernawati Abidin, Project Manager at the International Potato Centre (CIP).

In Ghana, CIP has set a goal of reaching nearly 500,000 households with resilient nutritious sweetpotato by 2020.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

Sweet potato: a special food security crop for health and wealth

The story is told of Nalongo Sekiguce, a widow and mother of 16 children, who lives in a hillside village in the Mukono district, a two hour drive from Kampala, Uganda.

Nalongo grew sweetpotato along with other traditional crops like banana and cassava. When she heard about the nutritional superiority of the Orange Fleshed sweetpotato, she planted it to feed her family.

She received her vines and training on good agricultural practices from extension workers trained by International Potato Centre (CIP) – one lesson she learned was that of clean planting material and how the vines from her sweetpotatoes could be multiplied and sold to others.

Nalongo became so good at this that once her cell phone number was announced on a radio station, she was inundated with calls for her vines.

Today, she grows just enough sweetpotato to feed her family but focuses on multiplying and selling her vines to other farmers as her primary source of income.

Adiel Mbabu, CIP Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa, describes Nalongo as his hero because she is such a good farmer and business woman and also because she took a chance on a new crop that was good for her family’s health and well-being.

Mr. Mbabu is therefore challenging other Africans to be like Nalongo by taking a chance on Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato.

 

“You know in Nalongo’s village they sing a song about it that says ‘the orange sweetpotato is the healthy one. It’s good for the eyes and the body’. This is true and it’s a great way to tell others about this nutritious crop,” he noted.

The CIP Strategic and Corporate Plan for the next 10 years is to reach 15 million households by responding to the strong demand for biofortified orange fleshed sweetpotato, working with national partners to generate new, locally adapted and nutritious sweetpotatoes and by accelerating breeding and multiplication.

“We can soon claim to have reached a milestone in our history by reaching one million households in Africa with sweetpotato – preventing blindness and stunting in children along the way. This is part of a 10 year CIP program to scale up and out Resilient Nutritious Sweetpotato in Sub-Saharan Africa,” stated CIP Director General, Barbara Wells.

Promoting new varieties in Ghana

In Ghana, CIP has set a goal of reaching nearly 500,000 households with resilient nutritious sweetpotato by 2020.

Former UN Secretary-general, Kofi Annan and Wife, Nane Annan joined a round table discussion led by CIP and attended by a range of Ghanaian partners to discuss innovative ways to harness the power of orange-fleshed sweetpotato, which is rich in beta carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A that is critical to enhance children’s health and in reducing blindness. The crop is also rich in other nutrients and carbohydrates vital for children under the age of five and lactating women.

“The high Vitamin A content of sweetpotatoes is of high value to children and young infants, particularly in West Africa and in Ghana,” stated Mrs. Nane Annan. “Offering vocational training to mothers and youth and making use of marginal lands is a great model for the region.”

Ghanaian researchers have been deliberating on opportunities and strategies to enhance sweetpotato production along the value chain for health and wealth creation.

Dr. Stella Ennin, Director of the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), describes sweetpotato as special food security crop in the face of climate change.

Her Institute has developed and released 12 high yielding sweet potato varieties, which yield 2-3 times higher than the traditional varieties.

The CRI-CSIR, as part of its vision, wants to establish a Sweetpotato Resource Centre “for stakeholder capacity building along the value chain”. This will serve to demonstrate best cropping and harvesting practices, provide technical backstopping to the private sector on commercial processing, raise the image of the crop and facilitate entrepreneurship in the sector.

CIP breeders will focus on developing a nutritious version of this sweetpotato to make it palatable to the Ghanaian taste buds and improve beta carotene intake.

“However, to get these scientific products in the hands of the smallholder farmers, it is critically important that we work closely with the partners who work closely with the target communities,” observed Adiel. 

He expects partners under the sweeetpotato value chain – from farm to folk – to work towards ensuring products and services generate health and wealth to the deserving communities in Ghana. 

This, he noted, “would be inspiring enough to turn it into another Nalongo story for Ghana”.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Local farmers can be part of global food security system – Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan championed the establishment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the objective of catalyzing the transformation of smallholder agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, sustainable and competitive system.

Since inception in 2007, AGRA has reached over 15 million farmers in 16 African countries with over $386 million invested in projects.

Ghana is among the four “breadbasket” countries receiving 44% of AGRA’s resources in support of farmers with seed and soil health and water management along the agricultural value chain. Other countries include Mali, Mozambique and Tanzania.

Today, the former UN Secretary-General says he has a bigger ambition for farming in Africa.

Kofi Annan wants smallholder farmers to become part of the global food security system.

According to him, local farmers can produce to feed their families and also for export by taking a collectively decision at the community level.

“Today Africa is spending $35 billion to import food and we have all the land around us; we have the labour, we can encourage young people to go into farming. If they don’t want to be called farmers, we’ll call them agribusinesses but get it done,” he stated.

Mr. Annan and Mrs. Nane Annan met with the International Potato Centre (CIP) to discuss collaboration with the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to promote sweet potato for health and wealth in Ghana and West Africa.

Citing the efforts of Ghanaian farmers in producing cocoa to feed the world, Mr. Annan noted that such drive can be extended to other crops like sweet potato.

“As a continent, some of us have the habit of producing what we don’t eat and importing what we eat; that has to stop,” he said.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Ghanaian women find new love for sweet potato

Women in parts of the Upper East, Volta and Central regions of Ghana have found new love in sweet potatoes.

They farm a lot of the crop. However, the product is mainly boiled or fried to serve as menu on the local cuisine of households.

But, through the Root and Tuber Improvement and Marketing Programme (RTIMP) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), women’s groups in the local communities have new job opportunities to increase family incomes. Hitherto they were engaged in the production and selling of soymilk and soybean ice cream.

They are now in the business of producing yogurt from sweet potato and helping to train others in the production. The ‘Potaghurt’, is healthy and nutritious.

RTIM identified, supported and trained women’s groups in the business of producing value-added potato products.

“After the training on potaghurt production, we realized that the products that they trained us on were good so we asked for some of the things that we may need to produce the Potaghurt”, said Madam Doris, who belongs to the Wedada group in the Kasena Nankana West District of the Upper East region.

The women receive financial support under the RTIMP’s Micro-Enterprise Fund (MEF), a non-cash commodity chain facility designed to meet the needs of the rural poor. This involves a 10 percent equity contribution from beneficiary groups, 40 percent grant from International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and 50 percent loan component from the Naara Rural Bank in Upper East Region.

The grant size ranges from $US400 for individuals in a group, to US$12,000 for growth oriented enterprises based on bankable business plan.

According to Dr. Oppong Mensah-Aborampah, business development training and marketing specialist in charge of the MEF, 48 enterprises and groups have been trained and supported to access the fund and over Gh¢382,000 total grant have been disbursed since 2007.


The women’s groups in the Potaghurt production have been supported with refrigerators, deep freezers, ice chests, sauce pans, ovens and blenders to prepare the Potaghurt.

They have performed “incredibly well”, says Kambilige Stanley, Project Officer of the Naara Rural Bank at Paga, noting that the women are recording almost 100 percent in loan repayment.

Already the RTIMP is looking forward to scaling up the Potaghurt business to other parts of the country where sweet potato is cultivated.

“All the farmers need to know is that there is market for the produce and they will go into the production of the sweet potato. So if the demand of the Potaghurt goes up, there will be market for the raw material and then farmers will go into production”, observed Veronica Ivy Dzreke, a Capacity Building and Linkages Officer with RTIMP.

She is excited at the demand for Potaghurt and believes building the capacity of the women in food hygiene, quality management and processing systems, business development, record keeping and costing will help sustain their businesses.

Presently, the business support has changed the fortunes of the women – beneficiaries can now further their education as well as support siblings and children’s education.

“It has helped some of us to be able to have market and that is bringing us income into our home… as at now I can use that money to purchase some small items that I need and if my husband gives me some money and it’s not enough I can use some of my profit to take care of the family”, said Madam Doris, who has moved her child from the public to private school because she can afford to pay the school fees from her improved income levels.

“What is left is to scale up and vigorously promote the product. For the start, sale points will be set up at the University of Development Studies whilst the RTIMP is in the process of advertising the product. The Ghana Institute of Packaging has been supported to develop a variety of packaging materials to snip varying products” says Akwasi Adjei Adjekum, the National Programme Coordinator of RTIMP.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh