Technical efficiency of smallholder barley farmers: The case of Welmera district, Central Oromia, Ethiopia

Crop production and productivity are not only inevitably affected by level of adoption of improved technologies and external factors but also the technical efficiencies of producers. The main objectives of this study are to estimate technical efficiency of sample barley farmers, assess determinant factors and compute yield loss due to inefficiency. Plot level data from 180 barley growers were collected through three stage systematic random sampling procedures. A one-step maximum likelihood was used to estimate stochastic frontier translog production function to determine the level of technical efficiency and its determinant factors. The estimated value of technical efficiency ranges from 0.11 to 0.99 with an average of 0.53 allowing inefficiency gap of 0.47 indicating the opportunity to increase barley output by 47% by using the same inputs mix and existing technology. The study found sex, age and education level of the household head, distance to all weather roads, credit service, group membership, extension contact, training, plot fragmentation, tenure status, and investment in fertilizers significantly impact technical efficiency. The result suggests the need to involve female headed households into extension and trainings, increase the education level of households through informal and formal literacy, inspire household membership into farmers’ groups and enable them to share best practices from model and more experienced farmers, inspire barley producers to invest on fertilizers and strengthen rural micro finance institutions to provide credit at some reasonable costs.       Key words: Barley farms, translog production function, technical efficiency, Welmera.