LIVER cancer and other health problems could be dramatically reduced in west Africa if farmers start taking simple measures to prevent stored crops going mouldy.
The mould fungi that grow on staple crops such as peanuts and maize produce toxic substances called aflatoxins. Consuming these toxins increases the risk of liver cancer, and can impair the growth and immune systems of young children. Large doses are fatal.
To see if changes in crop storage practices could make a difference, Chris Wild of the University of Leeds in the UK and his colleagues studied 20 farms in the Kindia region of Guinea. Ten farms adopted new measures to reduce fungal growth, including storing crops off the ground and using small amounts of insecticide to control mould-spreading pests. The other farms carried on as normal.
Advertisement
The team then measured aflatoxin levels in 600 people whose food supply came from the 20 farms. Five months after the harvest, levels among people eating crops from the experimental farms were half those of people from the control farms. And almost 20 per cent of those on the treated farms had no discernible level of aflatoxins, compared with only 2 per cent on the other farms (The Lancet, vol 365, p 1950).
鈥淲e had a lot of enthusiasm from the farmers for this project,鈥� says Wild. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 difficult for them to implement the measures.鈥�
