Abstract Ending hunger is a key goal of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015. This goal notwithstanding, the prevalence of severe food insecurity of the world’s population has increased. It is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the seasonality of harvests leads to fluctuations in food insecurity, particularly in the lean season, the time before the harvest is brought in. We posit that addressing seasonal food insecurity requires not only increased food production, as is commonly argued, but also consideration of post-harvest losses during storage. Here we present the results of a randomized control trial on the effects of improved on-farm storage on seasonal food insecurity. Our intervention provided farming households from two districts in Tanzania with hermetic storage bags that can help reduce storage losses. Seasonal food insecurity was measured via multiple rounds of SMS-based surveys. The results show that the intervention reduced the proportion of severely food insecure households by 38% on average in the lean season, and by 20% in the full seasonal cycle. These findings demonstrate that a simple and inexpensive technology could contribute strongly to reducing seasonal food insecurity and improving smallholder farmers’ year-round access to food.

中文翻译：

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改善农场储存减少小农家庭的季节性粮食不安全——来自坦桑尼亚随机对照试验的证据

摘要 消除饥饿是 2015 年通过的《2030 年可持续发展议程》的一个关键目标。尽管有这个目标，世界人口严重粮食不安全的情况有所增加。它在撒哈拉以南非洲最高，收获的季节性导致粮食不安全的波动，特别是在收成前的淡季。我们认为，解决季节性粮食不安全不仅需要增加粮食产量，正如人们普遍认为的那样，但也要考虑储存期间的收获后损失。在这里，我们展示了一项关于改善农场储存对季节性粮食不安全的影响的随机对照试验的结果。我们的干预为坦桑尼亚两个地区的农户提供了密封储物袋，有助于减少储存损失。季节性粮食不安全是通过多轮基于短信的调查来衡量的。结果表明，干预措施使严重粮食不安全家庭的比例在淡季平均减少了 38%，在整个季节周期中减少了 20%。这些发现表明，一种简单且廉价的技术可以极大地减少季节性粮食不安全，并改善小农全年获得粮食的机会。