Improving food safety on the farm: Experimental evidence from Kenya on agricultural incentives and subsidies as public health investments

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cg.authorship.typesCGIAR single centreen
cg.contributor.crpAgriculture for Nutrition and Health
cg.contributor.donorMinistry of Foreign Affairs, Finlanden
cg.contributor.donorDepartment for International Development, United Kingdomen
cg.coverage.countryKenya
cg.coverage.iso3166-alpha2KE
cg.coverage.regionAfrica
cg.coverage.regionSub-Saharan Africa
cg.coverage.regionEastern Africa
cg.creator.identifierVivian Hoffmann: 0000-0002-6464-3748
cg.creator.identifierKelly Jones: 0000-0001-9115-4192
cg.identifier.projectIFPRI - Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division
cg.identifier.publicationRankNot ranked
cg.number1746en
cg.placeWashington, DCen
cg.reviewStatusInternal Reviewen
dc.contributor.authorHoffmann, Vivianen
dc.contributor.authorJones, Kelly M.en
dc.date.accessioned2024-06-21T09:12:32Zen
dc.date.available2024-06-21T09:12:32Zen
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/147240
dc.titleImproving food safety on the farm: Experimental evidence from Kenya on agricultural incentives and subsidies as public health investmentsen
dcterms.abstractEvidence 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.en
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
dcterms.bibliographicCitationHoffmann, Vivian; and Jones, Kelly M. 2018. Improving food safety on the farm: Experimental evidence from Kenya on agricultural incentives and subsidies as public health investments. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1746. Washington, DC.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/147240en
dcterms.extent61 pagesen
dcterms.isPartOfIFPRI Discussion Paperen
dcterms.issued2018-08-03
dcterms.languageen
dcterms.publisherInternational Food Policy Research Instituteen
dcterms.relationhttps://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-015-1064-8en
dcterms.relationhttps://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12346en
dcterms.relationhttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105406en
dcterms.replaceshttps://ebrary.ifpri.org/digital/collection/p15738coll2/id/132768en
dcterms.subjecthealthen
dcterms.subjectcost benefit analysisen
dcterms.subjectagricultural policiesen
dcterms.subjectcapacity developmenten
dcterms.subjectpostharvest technologyen
dcterms.subjectfood safetyen
dcterms.subjectsmallholdersen
dcterms.subjectaflatoxinsen
dcterms.subjectinnovation adoptionen
dcterms.subjectsubsidiesen
dcterms.subjectpostharvest lossesen
dcterms.typeWorking Paper

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