Evidence continues to mount that foodborne illness imposes a staggering health burden in developing countries. However, standard approaches used by developed country governments to ensure food safety are not appropriate in settings where regulatory enforcement capacity is weak and most firms are small and informal. Thus, interventions to improve food safety in developing countries must take into account the constraints and incentives faced by producers in these countries. In this paper, we test the impact of two such interventions: subsidies for technologies that improve food safety and price premiums for safer produce. We examine the case of on-farm control of aflatoxin, a carcinogenic toxin linked to child stunting that is produced by a fungus commonly found on maize and groundnut. We show that compared to Kenyan farmers who produce maize only for their family’s own consumption, Kenyan farmers who produce maize for sale are less likely to undertake post-harvest practices that increase the unobservable quality of aflatoxin safety. Employing randomized discount vouchers, we find that willingness to pay for a new post-harvest technology to prevent aflatoxin contamination is significantly lower among market producers than subsistence farmers. However, we find that take-up of the technology among market producers increases when they have the opportunity to sell aflatoxin-safe maize at a premium a few months after harvest. Using take-up rates from the experiment, we model the impacts of public subsidies and market incentives for aflatoxin control. We find that subsidization of aflatoxin control technologies is a cost-effective strategy for reducing liver cancer and possibly also for reducing stunting in children. The most cost-effective technologies considered are widely adopted by both subsistence and market producers, implying little additional impact of a price premium on food safety.

This book provides a thorough introduction to and examination of agricultural value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, the authors introduce the economic theory of agri-food value chains and value chain governance, focusing on domestic and regional trade in (and consumption of) food crops in a low-income country context. In addition to mainstream and heterodox thinking about value chain development, the book pays attention to political economy considerations. The book also reviews the empirical evidence on value chain development and performance in Africa. It adopts multiple lenses to examine agricultural value chains, zooming out from the micro level (e.g., relational contracting in a context of market imperfections) to the meso level (e.g., distributional implications of various value chain interventions, inclusion of specific social groups) and the macro level (underlying income, population and urbanization trends, volumes and prices, etc.).Furthermore, this book places value chain development in the context of a process the authors refer to as structural transformation 2.0, which refers to a process where production factors (labor, land and capital) move from low-productivity agriculture to high-productivity agriculture. Finally, throughout the book the authors interpret the evidence in light of three important debates: (i) how competitive are rural factor and product markets, and what does this imply for distribution and innovation? (ii) what role do foreign investment and factor proportions play in the development of agri-food value chains in Africa? (iii) what complementary government policies can help facilitate a process of agricultural value chain transformation, towards high-productive activities and enhancing the capacity of value chains to generate employment opportunities and food security for a growing population.

Food safety hazards threaten the health and market access of smallholder farming households. Smallholders face a number of barriers to improving food safety and quality, including low awareness, high input costs, and the failure of premium prices to pass through to producers. In this paper we examine how lifting these barriers affects Ghanaian groundnut farmers’ adoption of low-tech, low-cost post-harvest practices that reduce aflatoxin contamination. We conduct a randomized controlled trial in northern Ghana over the course of two seasons to test three interventions: (1) training on aflatoxin and its prevention, (2) distribution of free drying sheets, and (3) a price premium for groundnuts that comply with local aflatoxin regulations. In the first year we test for effects on post-harvest practices and aflatoxin levels, and in the second we test for effects on aflatoxin levels only. We find that training farmers substantially improves post-harvest practices. Drying sheet distribution and to a lesser extent the premium price lead to further improvements. We find substantial corresponding decreases in aflatoxin levels from drying sheet provision in the study region where background aflatoxin levels were highest. Beyond regional differences, benefits are higher for households with higher aflatoxin at baseline, more members, and young children. The estimated impacts of the price premium intervention are of similar magnitude, but not statistically significant.

In this paper, we test the impact of a simulated market premium for food safety, and of bundling rainfall insurance with an aflatoxin-reducing technology (Aflasafe KE01), on smallholder farmers’ adoption of this technology. To identify these impacts, we conducted a randomized trial through which farmers in one of the most aflatoxin-affected regions in the world were given the opportunity to purchase Aflasafe under experimentally varied market conditions. Half of 152 pre-existing producer groups were assigned to a market linkage treatment and offered a premium price for the maize they aggregated if it conformed to the East African aflatoxin standard. The market linkage treatment was cross-cut with a bundled insurance treatment, in which Aflasafe could only be purchased together with an actuarily fair rainfall index insurance product designed to insure against maize losses due to unfavorable weather conditions during the growing period. Farmers not assigned to the bundled insurance treatment who purchased Aflasafe were able to purchase the same insurance separately.

This report strengthens the economic case for increased public investment and more robust policy attention to food safety in low and middle income countries and provides guidance on ways to achieve significant, broad-based impact from such actions.

The new Kenyan government faces a complex domestic and global environment, and it is widely expected to address key food and agricultural challenges with a new set of policies and programs. This policy brief presents key recommendations from a forthcoming book, Food Systems Transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the Past and Policy Options for the Future, which provides research-based “food for thought and action” to support the Kenyan government’s efforts to improve food security.

Aflatoxin is a poisonous substance produced by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus, that occurs naturally in soils of cultivated and non-cultivated areas. The fungus commonly produces the toxin in maize, groundnut, and other staple grains and vegetables, and is especially prevalent in Africa. When animals consume feed contaminated with aflatoxin, milk and (at very low levels) meat, fish and eggs, can also be contam-inated. This note brings together recent research from the CGIAR and others on technologies for aflatoxin control in Africa and provides recommendations for catalyzing their adoption.

Unlike physical losses, deterioration of food safety can be difficult to observe. In low- and middle- income countries, much of the food supply is never tested for safety hazards. We analyze data from 1500 maize samples and associated consumer surveys collected from clients of small-scale hammer mills in rural Kenya. We find that while visible damage to maize is penalized by lower prices, there is no correlation between price and aflatoxin, a carcinogenic fungal contaminant, implying an absence of market incentives to manage this aspect of food loss. Aflatoxin contamination is, however, correlated with consumer perceptions of quality, especially for self-produced maize, suggesting an information asymmetry that could lead to inefficiencies in this market.

New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

This book documents frontier knowledge on the drivers of agriculture productivity to derive pragmatic policy advice for governments and development partners on reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The analysis describes global trends and long-term sources of total factor productivity growth, along with broad trends in partial factor productivity for land and labor, revisiting the question of scale economies in farming. Technology is central to growth in agricultural productivity, yet across many parts of the developing world, readily available technology is never taken up. We investigate demand-side constraints of the technology equation to analyze factors that might influence producers, particularly poor producers, to adopt modern technology. Agriculture and food systems are rapidly transforming, characterized by shifting food preferences, the rise and growing sophistication of value chains, the increasing globalization of agriculture, and the expanding role of the public and private sectors in bringing about efficient and more rapid productivity growth. In light of this transformation, the analysis focuses on the supply side of the technology equation, exploring how the enabling environment and regulations related to trade and intellectual property rights stimulate Research and Development to raise productivity. The book also discusses emerging developments in modern value chains that contribute to rising productivity. This book is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.