Effects of Last-Mile Supply Chain Frictions on Crop Efficiency and Price Transmission

Efficient agricultural supply chains are central to food security, rural livelihoods, and macroeconomic stability. However, structural inefficiencies particularly in the last mile between farm gates and consumer markets continue to distort production incentives and price signals in developing and emerging economies. Last-mile supply chain frictions, including poor rural road infrastructure, fragmented logistics networks, limited cold storage, information asymmetry, and intermediary dominance, generate transaction costs that weaken market integration and reduce allocative efficiency. These frictions not only elevate post-harvest losses but also impair crop productivity decisions by constraining farmers’ access to timely inputs, credit, and reliable demand forecasts. From a broader systems perspective, supply chain bottlenecks disrupt price transmission mechanisms, leading to asymmetric adjustment between farm-gate and retail prices. Such distortions reduce producer surplus, inflate consumer prices, and exacerbate food inflation volatility. Narrowing the analysis, this study conceptualizes the causal pathways through which last-mile inefficiencies influence crop efficiency outcomes measured through yield optimization, post-harvest loss ratios, and input utilization and examines their moderating effects on spatial and temporal price transmission elasticities. By integrating logistics performance metrics with agricultural productivity indicators, the framework highlights how infrastructural, institutional, and informational constraints jointly shape market outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of targeted investments in rural transport, digital market platforms, storage infrastructure, and cooperative aggregation systems to enhance productivity, improve price integration, and strengthen resilience across agricultural value chains.