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# IV. TIMELINESS AND QUALITY OF TRANSPORT

27. The prev.ous section has discussed the transport pricing policy that is implicit in panterritorial pricing, but there are dimensions of transport services other than price that are of concern. One is the timing of transport relative to the harvest. If there are delays in the evacuation of crops, post-harvest losses may increase. In the case of cotton in the Cote d'Ivoire, these losses arise from weather damage primarily as a result of the first rains, from brush fires, from animal and insect infestation or other types of deterioration (DCGT, 1986, pp. 10 and 15). Alternatively, if actions are taken to protect the crops while waiting for evacuation, there are added expenses. Finally, any delay has a cost that depends on an (implicit or explicit) interest rate.

28. While there are benefits from evacuating most crops quickly, the very nature of a harvest period for a crop such as cottoni suggests a peaking in the demand for rural transport. Furthermore, cotton in the Cote d'Ivoire must compete for trucks with other crops that are ready to be evacuated at the same time, most especially coffee and cocoa (DCGT, 1986, p.<sup>33</sup> and 1988, p.34). It is uneconomic to maintain a truck fleet that is large enough to pick up all cotton as soon as it has been har.ested, and some delays have to be accepted. The costs of these delays seem to be borne largely by farmers rather than by the CIDT which only purchases and takes possession of the crop at the time of evacuation. To the extent, however, that delays in evacuation show up as a decrease in the quality of the cotton, the CIDT does bear some of the cost because the CIDT's price for second quality cotton is apparently too high relative to the price that it pays for that of first quality.

29. As a consequence of the peak load problem, the question arises as to how to allocate the scarce tricks among competing demands, and in particular which areas to evacuate first and which later. A powerful argument can be made that the more remote areas should be serviced later, and therefore should be left to experience higher post-harvest losses.

30. This point can be made with a simple example. Assume that there are two zones, a remote one (two days' drive from the port) and a nearby one (one day's drive from the port). Each zone produces one truck load of the crop, all of which is harvested at a single moment. There is one truck available to remove the crop. Obviously, it spends six days on the road, making two round trips. Which zone should be evacuated first to minimize total post-harvest **1A%cec** if the harvest deteriorates until it is put on the truck by _j3_ percent for each day so that the crop fetches only (1-,B) of what it would have the day before? The calculations are made in Table 6, and the answer is to remove the harvest from the nearby zone first because evacuating the nearby zone keeps the remote zone waiting less than the remote zone would keep the nearby zone waiting if it were evacuated first. I believe this result can be generalized easily to many zones at different distances with arbitrary harvest sizes and different truck availabilities.

31. While I therefore believe this result on the sequencing of harvest evacuation is very robust, there may be considerations that suggest alternative strategies. For instance, if rains come earlier in remote areas, or if they would make remote areas inaccessible while nearby areas could still be reached, then it might be economically desirable to evacuate remote areas