In this paper we descriptively investigate the Covid‐19 pandemic's early impact on the fruit and vegetable supply chain in Senegal, using trade statistics and survey data collected through online questionnaires and telephone interviews with smallholder farmers, agro‐industrial companies, agricultural workers, traders, importers, and consumers. Our results point to major differences in how Covid‐19 and containment measures disrupt supply chains between the modern export‐oriented supply chain that is centered around a few large vertically integrated agro‐industrial companies, and the more traditional domestic‐oriented supply chain with a large number of smallholder farmers and informal traders—with the former being more resilient to the Covid‐19 shock. We show that both the modern and the traditional supply chain innovate to cope with the Covid‐19 containment measures. While our study is subject to some limitations, our findings bring nuance in the debate on the resilience of the food system to the pandemic, and have important policy and research implications toward international trade, social safety measures, and food and nutrition security.

Horticultural exports from developing countries are expanding. While concerns are rising about the consequences of this growth for local food security, there is no empirical evidence that directly measures this impact. We provide such evidence for Senegal, one of the African countries with a sharp growth in horticultural exports. Using secondary data and panel survey data, we analyse the link between horticultural exports and the availability, access, utilization and stability components of food security. Results suggest that horticultural exports contribute to the capacity to import food, and do not jeopardize availability of food at the macroeconomic level. At the micro-economic level, we find that female wage employment in the horticultural export sector reduces the probability of food insecurity, improves the quality of food consumption, and shortens the hunger season. Highlights  Horticultural exports do not reduce food availability at the macro level  Horticultural exports improve households' food security through wage employment  Intra-household gender effects are important in these food security impacts

Evidence on rural wage employment is thin and lacks nuance for different employment sources, insights on dynamic effects, and an understanding of the channels of effects. We assess conceptually and empirically the direct and indirect welfare effects of entry and continuation in different types of wage employment in rural Senegal. Using panel data, fixed effects and first-difference estimation, we show substantial positive welfare and linkage effects. We find that participation in wage employment increases per capita income by 143%, and reduces poverty, poverty gap and food insecurity by, respectively, 63%, 89% and 48%. While the direct effect on income is larger for non-agricultural and contractual wage employment, the indirect income effects through self-employment are more pronounced for agricultural and casual wage employment. Our results imply that job creation is important for rural development, that wage employment in agriculture can lead to considerable growth multiplier effects, and that synergies exist between large-scale and small-scale agriculture.

The rapid transformation of the agri-food sector in developing countries has created rural off-farm employment opportunities, especially for women. There is growing concern about worker welfare and employment conditions in agri-food and export sectors, but empirical evidence on this issue is scant. We analyse contractual preferences of female workers in the horticultural export sector in Senegal. We use a discrete choice experiment to assess women's preferences for a labour contract and employ a latent class model to capture preference heterogeneity. We find that women have a high willingness to accept a labour contract in the horticultural export industry, and that differences in preferences for contract attributes can be explained by women's empowerment status.

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