Determinants of Technical Inefficiency of Food Crop Producers in the Fadama of Southern Guinea Savanna of Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined technical inefficiency of food crop production in the Fadama of southern guinea Savanna of Nigeria. A two- stage simple random sampling technique was used to obtain 149 food crop farming households interviewed for the study. A single- stage Cobb-Douglas based Stochastic Frontier Model using Maximum Likelihood Estimate (MLE) was used for analysing the data.  The MLE of the Stochastic Frontier Model revealed the presence of short run increasing return to scale with a mean technical efficiency of 68%.  This result indicated the possibility of improving efficiency of sampled fadama households by 32% with the existing resources and technology. The result of the inefficiency model shows that farm size, farm experience, access to credit, educational level and extension contact had negative and significant (p< 0.05).  This implied that increase in these variables would lead to less inefficiency.  Household size had positive and significant (p<0.05) relationship on inefficiency which implies that increase would lead to higher inefficiency. Mixed cropping, consolidation of household resources, increased use of animal traction and organic fertilizer as well as integrated pest management is recommended.