Seasonal price variability for cereals is two to three times higher in Africa than on the international reference market. Seasonality is even more pronounced when access to appropriate storage and opportunities for price arbitrage are limited. As smallholder farmers typically sell their production after harvest, when prices are low, this leads to lower incomes as well as higher food insecurity during the lean season, when prices are high. One solution to reduce seasonal stress is the use of improved storage technologies. Using data from a randomised controlled trial, in a major maize-growing region of Western Ethiopia, we study the impact of hermetic bags, a technology that protects stored grain against insect pests, so that the grain can be stored longer. Despite considerable price seasonality—maize prices in the lean season are 36% higher than after harvesting—we find no evidence that hermetic bags improve welfare, except that access to these bags allowed for a marginally longer storage period of maize intended for sale by 2 weeks. But this did not translate into measurable welfare gains as we found no changes in any of our welfare outcome indicators. This ‘near-null’ effect is due to the fact that maize storage losses in our study region are relatively lower than previous studies suggested—around 10% of the quantity stored—likely because of the widespread use of an alternative to protect maize during storage, for example a cheap but highly toxic fumigant. These findings are important for policies that seek to promote improved storage technologies in these settings.

中文翻译：

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获得改进的粮食储存技术是否会增加农民的福利？埃塞俄比亚玉米种植的实验证据

非洲谷物的季节性价格波动是国际参考市场的两到三倍。当获得适当存储空间和价格套利机会受到限制时，季节性就更加明显。由于小农通常在收成后价格较低时出售其产品，这会导致收入下降，并在青涩季节价格较高时加剧粮食不安全。减少季节性压力的一种解决方案是使用改进的存储技术。利用来自埃塞俄比亚西部主要玉米种植区的随机对照试验的数据，我们研究了密封袋的影响，密封袋是一种保护储存的谷物免受害虫侵害的技术，从而可以延长谷物的储存时间。尽管价格季节性很大（淡季的玉米价格比收获后高出 36%），但我们没有发现任何证据表明密封袋可以改善福利，除了使用这些袋子可以使打算出售的玉米储存期稍微延长 2 周之外。但这并没有转化为可衡量的福利收益，因为我们发现任何福利结果指标都没有变化。这种“近乎零”的效应是由于我们研究地区的玉米储存损失相对低于先前研究表明的水平（约占储存量的 10%），这可能是因为广泛使用了储存期间保护玉米的替代品，例如廉价但剧毒的熏蒸剂。这些发现对于寻求在这些环境中促进改进存储技术的政策非常重要。