A KENYAN CASE Samson Khachina DAO

Aflatoxin in maize

Problem/opportunity (Maize is the main staple food for Kenyans with over 95% of the population depending on it to meet their energy requirements. Despite having many years of training by agricultural extension personell to farmers on the recommended practices on production, there still remains the problem of post harvest storage losses, leading to The Government having to step in and allow importation of maize by private importers. At times The Government is forced to import and store in Government stores to either sell at subsidized prices or even to give it out free of charge as an emergency measure.

Problem/opportunity Despite having many years of training by agricultural extension personel to farmers on the recommended practices on production, there still remains the problem of post harvest storage losses, leading to The Government having to step in and allow importation of maize by private importers.

Explanation I have chosen this problem because it has a significant bearing on our economy on two fronts 1.A few people have died in the past after consuming maize contaminated with aflatoxin as a result of insufficient drying.This is highly unacceptable to have productive citizens dying due to avoidable reasons

Explanation 2. Sometimes our maize is rejected by the neighboring countries due to the high moisture contents at the time of sale. This taints the countries image and we may end up being unable to sell the maize during periods of bumper harvest and also given the efforts we are making to ensure higher productivity 3. The consumers are at times forced to eat the maize at a faster rate to avoid it going bad after poor initial post harvest practices.This leads to a lot of wastage

The main objectives in the strategy are three,namely 1.To reduce the losses due to the poor post harvest practices 2.To increase the market value of our maize as well as the acceptability of our maize in the regional market 3.Eliminate the deaths of our citizens due to aflatoxin while at the same time cutting down on health costs accuing from the same

T here are three ways in which this can be achieved namely Come up with a training program to educate the farmers on post harvest practices and try a achieve as large a coverage as possible Divide the area into grids and set up surveillance teams to check and report on incidents of aflatoxin Educate our traders on the harm they are causing the country when the sell grain that is not well dried to neighboring countries Arrange to put it in legislation and impose serious fines for those found selling maize that is contaminated