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Food safety and adverse selection in rural maize markets

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Title Food safety and adverse selection in rural maize markets
 
Creator Kadjo, D.
Ricker-Gilbert, J.
Shively, G.E.
Abdoulaye, Tahirou
 
Subject side effects
selection
safety
information
food security
benin
food safety
maize
aflatoxins
markets
 
Description Open Access Article
Without enforced standards or reliable third‐party verification, food safety threats such as pesticide residues and aflatoxin contamination are generally unobservable or only partially observable to both buyers and sellers, especially of staple foods in rural maize markets in sub‐Saharan Africa. As a result, sellers have more information about food quality than do buyers. Such information asymmetries can impede market development and undermine human health. We study farm household behaviour in the context of imperfect food safety information. We pool observations obtained from 707 food storage containers maintained by 309 farm households in Benin, surveyed following the maize harvests of 2011/2012 and 2013/2014. Our results indicate that when a household perceives a food safety risk associated with application of insecticides, on average it is 33 percentage points less likely to apply insecticides to maize it intends to consume than it is to maize it intends to sell. These individuals are also more likely to sell maize than households without food safety concerns. Results highlight the potential value of improved storage technologies and quality control to promote market transactions and reduce hidden health risks.
 
Date 2020-06
2019-09-26T08:46:27Z
2019-09-26T08:46:27Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Kadjo, D., Ricker‐Gilbert, J., Shively, G. & Abdoulaye, T. (2019). Food safety and adverse selection in rural maize markets. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1-27.
0021-857X
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/103750
https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12350
SOCIAL SCIENCE & AGRICUSINESS
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
Open Access
 
Format p. 412-438
application/pdf
 
Publisher Wiley
 
Source Journal of Agricultural Economics