The Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program (P- CRSP) is funded by the US Agency for International Development (AID). In addition to funding multidisciplinary research to improve all aspects of the peanut industry, the
P-CRSP was designed to require overseas collaborators in underdeveloped countries including scientists and graduate students. In this way, comparative cross-cultural research can be achieved.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology has had several P-CRSP projects. The latest two are in the Philippines (National Food Authority/Food Development Center (NFA/FDC) and University of the Philippines (UP)) and Thailand (Kasetsart Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Product Improvement Institute (KAAPI) at Kasetsart University).

Vitamin A deficiency is one of the leading causes of blindness among Filipino children. One solution to this problem is the fortification of foods with vitamin A. A technology was developed to fortify peanut butter through a grant from AID. One company in the Philippines adopted the technology and started selling Vitamin A peanut butter. The results of an impact assessment conducted by Professors Moxley and Clifford shows that thousands of children are now receiving an excellent source of Vitamin A and that peanut butter is an excellent medium through which Vitamin A can be delivered to children. Since all children are not eating the fortified peanut butter produced by the company adopting the technology, other producers are being encouraged to adopt the technology.

Another phase of this project has been to assess the socioeconomic impacts of instituting an aflatoxin elimination process (blanching, identification, and sorting). Aflatoxin, a known carcinogen, is found in peanuts. The results of the assessment show that there was a significant increase in export sales of a peanut based products to countries with rigorous aflatoxin content limits, especially the United States. The results are now being used to encourage other companies and producers in both the Philippines and Thailand to adopt the aflatoxin elimination process.

In Thailand KAAPI food scientists, nutritionists, and home economists held technology transfer workshops to train 163 individuals in private industry and the members of peanut product cooperatives in new food safety and food preparation technology. These new technologies included aflatoxin elimination procedures for raw peanuts and the preparation of 6 peanut products for commercial production. As in the Philippines, Drs. Moxley and Clifford traveled to Thailand to train non-social scientists and their graduate students in social science research methods in order for them to carry out a study to assess the impacts of their technology transfer workshops. They will share the data with us so that we can do studies of the causes of adoption or non-adoption of new technology.