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, we...

The Potency of Quality Incentives: Evidence from the Indonesian Dairy Value Chain

“…Results thus confirm that price incentives are a potent tool for quality improvement. This finding is in line with previous research (Saenger et al 2013; Bernard et al 2017; Hoffmann and Jones 2018; Magnan et al 2019; Hoffmann et al 2020).…”

“…To reduce transaction costs, quality tests are often conducted only at the aggregated level so that individual quality cannot be rewarded, and investment in quality is essentially a public good. Examples are widespread and are documented for wheat in Ethiopia (Abate et al 2019), maize in Kenya (Hoffmann and Jones 2018; Hoffmann et al 2020), groundnuts in Ghana (Magnan et al 2019), and onions in Senegal (Bernard et al 2017).…”

“…Saenger et al (2013) use a lab‐in‐the‐field experiment to study the effect of offering quality incentives to dairy farmers in Vietnam and found that both a higher penalty for low quality milk and an extra bonus for high quality increase the use of inputs. Three field experiments found that offering price premiums for conforming to local aflatoxin standards to groundnut farmers in Ghana and maize farmers in Kenya increases the adoption of aflatoxin preventing technologies and decreases aflatoxin contamination (Hoffmann and Jones 2018; Magnan et al 2019; Hoffmann et al 2020). In one study, by Bernard et al (2017), quality is assessed by a third party and quality incentives are provided by private actors.…”

“…On top of that, existing field studies consider effects during at most one agricultural season, which are therefore driven by farmer's expectations on the production function and quality measurement. By exception, Magnan et al (2019) study effects during two agricultural seasons to allow some trust to grow after the first season. In contrast, this article studies impacts over multiple years, during which farmers can monthly update their information after receiving signals from the incentive system.…”

Foodborne diseases and food safety in sub-Saharan Africa: Current situation of three representative countries and policy recommendations for the region

“…Policymakers in SSA should consider implementing public information campaigns in both rural and urban areas to raise awareness of food safety issues. Providing information about food safety is a key component of approaches to increase the quality of foods produced by smallholder farmers (Bauchet et al 2021;Magnan et al 2021), as well as consumers' willingness to pay for safer foods (De Groote et al 2016;Nindi et al 2021). Increased awareness will empower African consumers to demand safer food and pay price premiums to foster better production practices.…”