Abstract
Few studies in the economics of food safety literature follow-up with participants in the years after an intervention. This limits our ability to assess an intervention’s longer-term benefits, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness. In this article we follow up with about 2000 smallholder farming households in Senegal two years after they participated in a randomized controlled trial aimed at reducing levels of aflatoxins in stored maize. In the longer-term, providing a combination of training, a moisture meter, and a tarp decreased levels of aflatoxins by about 20 percent compared to the control group. Estimates of the marginal effect of each input in the bundle indicated that the tarp was the key input driving these results. Additionally, we found that providing training and a tarp was moderately cost-effective based on WHO guidelines for public health interventions. Hermetic (airtight) maize storage bags, which were found to be the most effective technology at reducing aflatoxins immediately after the intervention in 2017, did not statistically significantly lower aflatoxins levels in 2019. This is likely due to supply chain issues in which respondents had difficulties in purchasing replacement bags from local suppliers. Differences between the short-term and longer-term findings underscore the need for longer follow-up periods after conducting an intervention.
Highlights
Aij - level of aflatoxins in 2019 Group2, Group3, Group4, and Group5 - treatment dummies Xij - vector of covariates unbalanced at baseline Ej, - vector of six dummies representing seven extension agents ε!" - error term
Ø ITT effects: Providing training on aflatoxins, a hygrometer, and a tarp significantly reduced aflatoxins levels by 20%, two years post-intervention (Table 1)
Ø Longer-run findings differ from short-run findings (Bauchet et al 2020) Ø Likely due to low hermetic bag use in 2019 (6%) Ø Potential supply-side constraints: hermetic bags only recently became available in study area
Summary
Ø Measure the longer-term impacts of an extension-based food safety interventionØ Provide more large-scale, field evidence on the efficacy of affordable technologies at reducing aflatoxins in smallholder households’ maize.Ø Assess if households with different observable characteristics benefit differently from the intervention.
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