Hello everyone! It is a Monday and I have a
bad sore throat. I picked up a bug from my market trip on Friday. So I am on my
home made concoction (Garlic + Ginger + Honey
+ Hot water). And yes, constant
TLC from my darling hubby.
I want to talk about how we dispose our
waste in the market and also general display of farm produce, Tomato section. Everywhere
you go in Mile 12 market is like a waste dump. The air around there smells like
vomit. Every tomato stand has a heap of waste next to it. The ground is marshy,
wet and stinky. I do not want to believe this is the best we can have. I can
imagine the huge turn away this has been for a lot of customers so definitely this
has brought the traders loss of revenue.
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| Waste dump at every corner |
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| Waste everywhere, this can't be right |
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| There just has to be something better than this |
In the tomato section alone we have
tomatoes from Zaria, Sokoto, Katsina, Ogun, Ghana, Cotonou, Jos and all sorts
of places. I do not know how it is done elsewhere but I believe we need to
arrange them by source in an organised way for ease of access/identification by
the customers. Grading of the produce is also key as more than half of the
produce are rotten by the time they get off the truck.
The baskets are not standardized, the
weight is not known so when you shop you actually are not sure of what you are
getting until you get to your home/office.
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| Nothing identifies the source of this tomato. Whatever the trader tells you cannot be verified. |
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| Rotten, over ripe, green, unripe, all in the same basket |
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| Some baskets come covered with brown paper, some opened, some with sack. Various sizes of basket. Anything goes. |
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| what is the arrangement, which tomato is from where. what is the weight and size of the basket |
I’m sure there is a better way we can plan
this so that farmers/growers that want to supply to Lagos market have a
standard basket and standard grade of each produce to follow. Anything goes
right now. In an average basket of tomatoes about a third is rotten. Buying the
sorted basket is more expensive and that is an exception to the rule. The rule
has to be all the produce are of standard, good grades. If you want to buy lower
grades/rotten then that should be the exception.
I will be meeting the representatives of Association
of Tomato sellers and dealers this week and I’ll post our discussions and
pictures here. My agenda for that meeting is to get a full low down of all source of the tomato supplies
to Mile 12? Discuss the waster situation around the stands, Find out the present produce grading standards are? what the present
arrangement for display is? how it can be improved to help the customer and
most importantly show them how we can improve the earnings of their members
by improving the organisation of the market?.
Win-win is what we are after and we need
all stakeholders to buy into that.
I want to hear your thoughts on this. Thank
you for reading.
Food Safety Rocks!
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