Using SMS Surveys to track smallholder farmer’s food security

The problem: food insecurity and storage losses

Food insecurity is an important issue faced by smallholder farmers in developing countries. Climatic factors, bad harvests and other food supply shocks can lead to food shortages, but stockpiling food after harvest may help farmers to better cope with temporary food shortages. Due to significant storage losses, however, storing after harvest is often not a viable option for famers.

The idea: hermetic storage bags

A simple technology to prevent storage losses are hermetic storage bags. These airtight bags allow farmers to store their harvest with limited risk of insect infestation or mold. Impaxio co-founders Matthias Huss and Michael Brander co-authored several studies on the effectiveness of hermetic storage bags. In their latest paper recently published in Global Food Security and co-authored with Menale Kassie (icipe), Ulrike Ehlert (University of Zurich) and Thomas Bernauer (ETH Zurich), they investigate the effect of hermetic bags on food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya. In Kenya, lockdown restrictions imposed by the government negatively affected rural markets and trade. As a result, many farmers were no longer able to sell their produce on markets or buy food for their own consumption. This led to a period of increased food insecurity for many farmers, reflecting a temporary food supply shock.

Measuring food security through SMS surveys

Leveraging the perks of SMS surveys, the researchers were able to track food security of 3’220 Kenyan smallholder households before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdown measures. To measure food insecurity, the authors used the reduced Coping Strategies Index, which is an index computed based on five simple questions on household’s food consumption. The researchers asked farmers these questions via monthly SMS-based surveys. SMS-based surveys allowed them to capture changes in food security despite their large and geographically remote sample. Using SMS-based surveys also enabled the research team to continue their data collection even during times of COVID-19 movement restrictions. Phone credits were sent to Farmers upon completion of the survey to incentivize participation (the average SMS survey response rate was 46%). It is only thanks to the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of SMS surveys, that it was possible to collect such high frequency field data in this challenging environment.

Reduced vulnerability through hermetic bags

The results of the study suggest that farmers are indeed able to counteract temporary food insecurity by falling back on their stored produce. While food insecurity sharply rose overall during the lockdown measures among control group households, it rose significantly less for farmers who had received five hermetic bags and a training session in how to use them before COVID-19. Results from focus group discussions further support the hypothesis that stored produce was used to absorb the initial food supply shock when the lockdown measures were introduced.

This study also demonstrates how SMS surveys can be a flexible and effective way to collect field data for research purposes. Through Impaxio, Matthias Huss and Michael Brander offer their expertise in SMS-based data collection and rigorous impact analyses to other researchers and evaluation specialists.

For reference:

Huss, M, M Brander, M Kassie, U Ehlert, and T Bernauer. 2021. “Improved Storage Mitigates Vulnerability to Food-Supply Shocks in Smallholder Agriculture during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Global Food Security 28: 100468. https://doi.org/https://doi.or....