Open AccessDeterminants of technical efficiency among lowland rice farmers in Enugu State, Nigeria: a stochastic frontier production function approach
Author(s) -
T.C. Okoh,
Patience Ifeyinwa Opata,
J.C. Ibe,
S.C. Onyenekwe,
K.P. Ikubaiyeje,
P.O. Ettum
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of agriculture and food sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1597-1074
DOI - 10.4314/jafs.v19i2.7
Subject(s) - inefficiency , production (economics) , multistage sampling , cropping , simple random sample , agricultural science , agriculture , fertilizer , business , agricultural economics , production–possibility frontier , mathematics , economics , environmental science , geography , statistics , agronomy , population , demography , archaeology , sociology , biology , macroeconomics , microeconomics
The study examined the determinants of technical efficiency among lowland rice farmers in Enugu State, Nigeria. Primary data were sourced from rice producers through the use of well designed questionnaires. The study was conducted in four agricultural zones of Enugu State, during the 2017/2018 cropping season. Multistage and simple random sampling technique was employed to select 300 sampled rice farmers for the study. Cobb-Douglas stochastic production frontier function was used for the analysis.The result revealed that (98%)of random variation in the output of farmers was because of their inefficiency in their use of productive inputs in the study area. .Apart from farm size with estimated coefficient of (0.0531), fertilizer (0.0329), seed (0.2319), labour (0.0804) and agro-chemical (0.1711) were underutilized by the rice farmers. The average technical efficiency for the farmers was 0.71 implying that, on the average, the respondents are able to obtain 71% of potential output from a given mixture of production inputs. Thus, in a short run, there is a minimal scope (29%) of increasing the efficiency, by adopting the technology and techniques used by the most technically efficient farmer. High cost of inputs (MS=3.69), bad roads (MS=3.67), poor credit accessibility (MS=3.40) and inadequate storage facilities (MS2.90) were found to be the major constraints of the rice farmers. The study recommends that in order to improve efficiency of resource use by the farmers in the study area, more of labour, seed, fertilizer and agro-chemicals should be utilized.