Our Experience

Kenya Mitigating Aflatoxin Exposure to Children in Eastern Kenya

Project Description
With funding from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Agribusiness Systems International (ASI) will implement a year-long project to mitigate the risk of aflatoxin exposure to Kenyans, especially children. Aflatoxin is a toxic byproduct of the Aspergillus fungus known to cause cancer, immune-system suppression, growth retardation, liver disease and death in both humans and domestic animals. The toxin can contaminate grain before or after harvest.

ASI will provide aflatoxin awareness training to farmers in rural communities as well as training on improved post-harvest practices including storage. Through this project, IFPRI draws upon ASI’s extensive experience working with smallholder farmers. ASI will assist IFPRI in developing effective messaging and designing farmer-appropriate written, pictorial and verbal training materials.

Project Approach
ASI’s training activities will help IFPRI explore techniques to reduce the impact of aflatoxin exposure on children’s growth and identify a package of training materials that will reduce aflatoxin contamination. The first training will raise widespread aflatoxin awareness and convey potential  health  impacts  of  consuming  aflatoxin, information on how  crops  become infected  and  post-harvest practices  that can  reduce  the  presence  of aflatoxin. The second training will be for a subset of farmers who are either pregnant and in their third trimester, or have a child younger than one-year-old in their family. This training will provide in-depth education on improved post-harvest and storage practices that can reduce the presence of aflatoxin in food stocks.

Impact and Accomplishments
ASI will conduct aflatoxin awareness training in 65 villages, with 15 villages receiving additional training on improved post-harvest handling and storage. Cumulatively the efforts will increase aflatoxin awareness and reduce its impact on more than 1,000 smallholder farmer households.

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