Smallholder farmers in Africa are subject to many risks, some of them made worse by climate change. Well-targeted weather forecasts and crop insurance can help to limit losses and improve food security. It makes sense to link both services.
THE STANDARD
OPINION
Farmers and other agricultural workers may be exposed by inhaling dust generated during the handling and processing of contaminated crops and feeds. [Kipsang Joseph/Standard]
Efforts to control aflatoxin in Kenya mostly focus on testing maize once it reaches our borders, or once it hits supermarket shelves.
Enforcement of food safety regulations is necessary but insufficient to solve this problem. Aflatoxin contamination must be addressed at its root, during production and on-farm storage.
Research by International Food Policy Research Institute and others points to some solutions including education, incentivising farmers and removing the middleman. Educating farmers about how to prevent aflatoxin leads to better practices, which can also improve the quality of grain.
Nigeria boasts of 34 million hectares of arable land area, with about 6.5 million hectares for permanent crops. Little wonder, Agriculture serves as the country’s main driver of the economy after oil. But despite the goodies in the sector, the country imported wheat worth N2.2 trillion in the last four years.
In 1968, he accepted an offer to work at Hershey Medical Center.
In 1974, he made a dramatic career change to insurance. And in 1985, he bought an insurance agency, now known as Robertson Insurance & Risk Management, 3399 Jetstar Drive, Lititz, which he runs with his sons Craig and Neil.
He is a member of Grace Community Church in Willow Street, where he chairs the mission committee.
Over the years, he made five or six trips to South Africa, where he helps a friend teach a Bible class and reaches out to high school students. On his last trip there, he met a man from Malawi, who urged him to visit that country, which he did for a weekend in 2018.
Stoop); International Food Policy Research Institute (
Hirvonen); Université catholique de Louvain, or UCLouvain (
Maystadt); Lancaster University (
Maystadt) Recognising the extent to which a lack of institutional trust jeopardises vaccination campaigns is crucial to improve immunisation rates. While the persistence of subnational pockets of low vaccination coverage in Africa has been attributed to societal, cultural, and religious considerations, as well as to limited access to vaccination services and to caregiver knowledge gaps, researchers are increasingly pointing to the role of vaccine hesitancy in hindering progress towards universal child immunisation coverage. Qualitative evidence suggests that lack of trust in local and national authorities is linked to vaccine hesitancy and refusal across the continent. For example, lack of trust in governments has been found to lead parents to question the vaccine information they receive from health authorities and thus affect