Reducing food-related economic loss to improve food security and cattle trade in the Sahel: the case of agropastoral systems in Senegal

Food loss is a critical issue in Africa, but investigation has mainly been limited to quantity loss. Economic losses are likely to be more significant but are widely ignored. Regarding ruminant-related losses, it remains challenging to identify the optimal harvest point. Focusing on Sahelian agropastoral systems, where stakeholders operate in a shock-prone environment, our paper explains how critical actor behaviour is, and it addresses economic losses on live-animal transactions while integrating market behaviours into the analysis. Loss elimination being illusory in such a context, our findings pioneer a loss reduction approach that is supported by an appropriate optimisation programme tested on primary data collected from 202 agropastoral households in Senegal.