Food systems and agriculture
Where cassava is lost between the farm and the market
A season of weighing the same crop at four points on its way to a Benin City market, and the one stage that accounts for most of what never arrives.
Published 31 July 2026
Losses between harvest and sale are usually reported as a single figure, which makes them look like something to be reduced everywhere at once. Weighing the same consignments at four points along the route gives a different picture.
Very little is lost in the field or at the market. Almost all of it goes in the two or three days between lifting and reaching a road — which is a storage and handling problem at the smallest scale, on farms that have no reason to invest in either.
The work now is on what a shared facility at that stage would have to cost to be worth using, and who would have to own it.