Bio-based and Applied Economics (Sep 2023)
Reducing food-related economic loss to improve food security and cattle trade in the structural embeddedness context of the Sahel
Abstract
Food loss is a critical issue in Africa and is mostly limited to quantity loss. Economic losses are likely to be larger but widely ignored. Regarding ruminant-related losses, the optimal harvest point remains difficult to identify. Focusing on Sahelian (agro)pastoral systems with stakeholders operating in a shock-prone environment, our paper explains how critical the actor behaviours are and addresses economic losses on live-animal transactions while fully integrating market behaviors which, should be incorporated in the analysis. Mitigation costs being illusory in such contexts, our findings pioneer a loss reduction approach supported by an appropriate optimization program tested on primary data collected from 202 (agro)pastoral households in Senegal.
