Information, technology, and market rewards: Incentivizing aflatoxin control in Ghana

Abstract

Food safety hazards arising at the farm level affect the health of agricultural households as well as access to high value markets, which typically require that produce meets strict quality and food safety standards. Smallholder farmers face a number of barriers to improving the quality and safety of their produce, including a lack of awareness about safety and quality standards, the cost of equipment required to improve these, and the failure of premium prices to pass through to farmers. In this paper, we examine how lifting each of these barriers affects Ghanaian groundnut farmers' adoption of post-harvest practices that reduce aflatoxin contamination. Aflatoxins are carcinogenic secondary metabolites of certain molds, which cause serious health problems including liver cancer. Common in groundnuts and maize, staple foods in much of Africa, aflatoxins pose a major threat to food safety and hinder the development of local agricultural value chains and export markets. Aflatoxin contamination can be substantially reduced through low-tech, low-cost post-harvest practices. We conducted a randomized control trial in northern Ghana with 1,005 farmers over the course of two seasons to test the imapct of three interventions to improve post harvest practices and reduce aflatoxin levels: (1) farmer training on aflatoxin and its prevention, (2) distribution of free drying tarps, and (3) a price premium for groundnuts found to comply with the local aflatoxin regulation. Training farmers substantially improves post-harvest practices. Tarp receipt further improves some practices, particularly with regards to drying surface. Surprisingly, we find that the price premium had little effect on reported or observed practices, and few farmers even sold nuts at this premium despite achieving compliance. Relative to training alone, tarp distribution reduced afaltoxin contamination by approximately 50 percent in the region and year when background levels were highest. The market premium also reduced aflatoxin levels, although to a lesser extent. Recent analysis indicates that the global health burden attributable to unsafe food compares to that of malaria or tuberculosis, and disproportionately affects developing countries (Havelaar et al., 2015). Further, food safety hazards, many of which arise at the farm level, can lock farmers out of valuable markets, and may tarnish the reputations of entire nations, limiting export opportunties. Many barriers prevent farmers in developing countries from adoptoing better food safety practices. First, long-neglected agricultural extension systems mean that information on food safety hazards and their prevention is scarce (Anderson and Feder, 2004). Second, the small scale of production and low incomes of farm households can make adoption of technologies to improve the safety of produce unprofitable, or simply unaffordable. Finally, premiums for safer food and other difficult to observe qualities often do not pass through to the primary producer (Fafchamps, Hill, and Minten, 2008). In this paper, w...

Agricultural value chains: towards a marriage of development economics and industrial organisation?*

“…For example, what happens to available varieties on the market as consumer incomes and preferences change? Imperfect information in both input and output markets. For example, how does the presence of fake seeds or tainted goods, such as aflatoxin‐contaminated groundnuts (Magnan et al., 2021) or maize (Hoffmann & Moser, 2017), do to equilibrium behaviour? And does that kind of imperfect information lead to some markets unravelling altogether? Market structure.…”

Technologies and strategies for aflatoxin control in Kenya: A synthesis of emerging evidence

“…Good post-harvest practices, including adequate drying and controlled storage, have long been the standard recommendation for controlling aflatoxin in crops. Providing groundnut farmers with training on aflatoxin control and plastic sheets on which they could dry their crops was shown to reduce aflatoxin by approximately 50% in Ghana, compared to similar farmers who were trained but not given drying sheets (Magnan et al, 2019). In a separate study in Kenya, maize farmers were given drying sheets as well as access to other technologies.…”

“…Several recent studies show that without access to premium markets or significant subsidies, smallholders' take-up of technologies to manage aflatoxin is generally low. For example, 6.9% of groundnut farmers in Northern Ghana were observed to use plastic drying sheets after receiving training on aflatoxin prevention and an opportunity to purchase these (Magnan et al, 2019), maize farmers in the Upper East region of Kenya dried 28% of their harvest when offered access to a maize dryer (Hoffmann and Jones, 2018), and 13% of maize farmers in the same area purchased enough biocontrol product to treat approximately a third of their land under maize when the product was offered at less than 50% of its recommended retail price (Hoffmann et al, 2018b). When the drying sheets and the drying service were offered free of charge, directly observed usage rates climbed to 54%, 62% respectively.…”

Technologies and strategies for aflatoxin control in Ghana: A synthesis of emerging evidence

“…Sources: Florkowski and Kolavalli, 2013;Agbetiameh et al, 2018;Magnan et al, 2019 In Africa, most human exposure to the toxin is through consumption of maize due to heavy reliance on this grain as a dietary staple (Abizari et al, 2016). In addition, as shown in Figure 2, very high concentrations of aflatoxin have been found in processed groundnut products, including in premixed cereal blends sold as infant food (Florkowski and Kolavalli, 2013;Opoku et al, 2018).…”

“…Several recent studies, summarized in Figure 4, show that without access to premium markets or significant subsidies, smallholders' take-up of technologies to manage aflatoxin is generally low. For example, 6.9% of groundnut farmers in Northern Ghana were observed to use plastic drying sheets after receiving training on aflatoxin prevention and an opportunity to purchase these (Magnan et al, 2019), maize farmers in the Upper East region of Kenya dried 28% of their harvest when offered access to a maize dryer (Hoffmann and Jones, 2018), and 13% of maize farmers in the same area purchased enough biocontrol product to treat approximately a third of their land under maize when the product was offered at less than 50% of its recommended retail price (Hoffmann et al, 2018b). When the drying sheets and the drying service were offered free of charge, directly observed usage rates climbed to 54%, 62% respectively.…”