The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and specifically SDG 2, commit the international community to
achieve zero hunger by 2030 through a renewed focus on agricultural development for food security and
nutrition. This paper presents a systematic review of published evidence of contributions by agricultural sector
interventions to food security, including indicators and success factors.
Our literature screening yielded a sample of 66 publications with 73 single or multiple intervention evaluations.
Of these, 38 (52%) used a direct food security indicator to measure food security impacts, and the rest used
a proxy indicator. Of the 73 evaluations, 49 (67%) resulted in positive impacts on food security, 17 (23%)
produced no measurable impacts and 7 (10%) led to negative impacts. Interventions studied included input
subsidies, extension services and value chain enhancements, delivered either alone or together, and sometimes
with specific complementary pro-poor features. Studies showed positive, neutral or even negative food security
outcomes across all intervention types, suggesting that program design features may be more important than the
type of intervention in determining impact on food security. Positive food security outcomes were shown to be
linked to multiple complementary interventions, targeted pro-poor support features, responsiveness to local food
security issues, community engagement and collaboration with local and regional institutions. We suggest
methods for improving monitoring, evaluation and learning related to the food security impacts of agriculture
sector interventions in order to contribute to SDG 2.1.