Aflatoxin contaminated groundnuts
One year, groundnut farmers in sub-Saharan Africa were enjoying harvests and exports that allowed them to feed and educate their children, and the next, the door to the international market was slammed shut. The culprit? Aflatoxin.
Aflatoxins?are potent toxins that are produced by certain types of fungi. Naturally occurring and potentially deadly, they infest crops such as groundnuts (peanuts), sorghum, cassava and maize. When ingested, aflatoxins can result in disease anywhere in the body, but are most commonly known for causing acute or chronic liver disease and liver cancer. More than five billion people in the developing world are exposed to aflatoxins by unknowingly consuming contaminated foods.
Although countries across sub-Saharan Africa had been adhering to international aflatoxin safety standards for years, successfully exporting a wide variety of crops, increasingly stringent food safety standards in western countries pushed many smallholder farmers out of the market ? the new testing that was demanded of them was just too expensive. Fears grew that the new standards could cost African countries US$670 million in lost groundnut exports.
Mchinji National Smallholders Farmers? Association of Malawi (MASFAM), one of the farmer co-operatives under the umbrella of the National Small Farmers Association of Malawi ?(NASFAM), is just one group of farmers that was shut out of the groundnut export trade due to European Union trade aflatoxin regulations. But they have now come full circle. A new low-cost detection kit developed by the International Agriculture research Center for Semi-Arid Tropics ?(ICRISAT) has revitalized their business.
The kit has cut the cost of testing crops from US$25 to US$1 per sample, and has re-opened the doors to export. The simple kit can even be used by the most remote farmers to monitor grains and nuts for the presence of the toxin. In addition, ICRISAT has trained farmers in improved storage techniques to avoid contamination.
More than 4,000 MASFAM farmers are again exporting high-quality groundnuts to Europe under a fair trade agreement. Moses Siambi, an ICRISAT scientist based in Lilongwe, Malawi?s capital, is delighted. ?We?ve seen a very positive impact,? he said. ?Malawian groundnuts are now available in the biggest supermarkets in Britain.?
?According to Dr Farid Waliyar, ICRISAT West and Central African Director, ICRISAT is now transferring the Malawi experience to many other African countries. ?We have also developed solutions to minimize aflatoxin contamination pre-and post-harvest and we are seeking financial support to help scale-up these technologies,? he said.
NASFAM has successfully used the new aflatoxin detection kit as part of a broader effort to re-establish its European export market ?and many small farmer co-operatives across the continent could soon be following suit.
Read an in-depth Scidev report: Purging Malawi?s peanuts of deadly aflatoxin
Photo credit:?IITA
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