Title: The measurement of productive and technical efficiency of cassava farmers in the North - central zone of Nigeria
Abstract: This study was carried out to investigate the productive and technical efficiency of cassava farmers in the North-Central Zone of Nigeria. Given the specification of the stochastic frontier production function, the null hypothesis that the cassava farmers were fully technically efficient is rejected since there was presence of inefficiency effects in the model. The technical efficiencies of the farmers widely varied between 0.329 and 0.920. The study further showed that cassava production was in the rational stage of production (stage II) in the zone as represented by the returns to scale (RTS) 0.757. The variable of interest (age, farm distance, household size, health status, labour and operating expense were effectively allocated and used, as confirmed by each variable having estimate coefficient value between zero and unity. This study further suggested that while age, labour, access to credit facilities, health status and farm size negatively affected farmers’ productivity and technical efficiencies, generally, increase in other socio-economic variables (operating cost, labour, cost of fertilizers and agrochemicals led to decrease in technical efficiency (TE). More effective extension services, increased farm sizes with less fragmentation, increased subsidies on farm inputs and well-maintained feeder roads, especially during harvesting season will further improve farmers’ TE.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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