Throughout the tropics much of the food harvested is lost during storage. More affluent farmers can and so spray their stored food crops with chemical pesticides to prevent worms, beetles and other infestations. Neem offers the impoverished farmers and even affluent farmers wanting to replace pesticides a natural and inexpensive alternative. A light coating of neem oil protects stored food crops for up to twenty months from all types of infestations with no deterioration or loss of palatability. ( Dunkel er al, 1995).