Spatial disparity, information, and the economics of cool transportation: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Nigeria

Food loss is a significant source of economic inefficiency in value chains. In many developing countries, including Nigeria, a majority of fruits, vegetables, and other perishable foods are lost after harvest, due in large part to inadequate postharvest handling or low adoption of post-harvest management technologies, particularly cooling technologies such as temperature-controlled transportation and cold storage. To examine the economic impacts of cool transportation connecting vegetable-producing states in northeast Nigeria to large demand centers in Nigeria’s southern regions, we introduced a randomized controlled trial. Cool transportation was found to have a large and statistically significant impact: sales price, revenues, and profits increased substantially for the origin-state marketers. A larger portion of sales price increase at the destination market is attributed to refrigeration, that is, quality preservation through cooling. About 66 percent of this increase comes from cooling, with an additional 34 percent from transportation. An information experiment further showed that improved quality information through labelling that identifies the origin of the produce creates price premiums at the destination market. This implies that significant economic gains can be generated not only from narrowing supply–demand gaps in different markets but also, potentially, through mitigating spatial asymmetric information.