Comparative Economic Analyses of Production Efficiency of Fadama II Catfish Beneficiaries with Non- Beneficiaries, Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study compared the production efficiencies of Fadama II catfish farmers with non-beneficiaries in Ogun State. Stochastic Frontier Analysis and difference of mean statistics were used to analyze the primary data collected from two hundred and seventy (270) respondents among the 10 the Fadama participating Local Government Areas. The Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLE) for the production function revealed that fertilizer (X₁), quantity of feed (X₃) and pond size (X₇) at  (p<0.01) determined the output of the beneficiaries and quantity of feed (X₃) (p<0.05), fingerlings (X₅)and pond size(X₇)  at (p<0.01) also have positive and significant effect on the output of the non-beneficiaries. The production  inefficiency analysis  revealed that farm efficiency would increase with increase in benefits status and extension contact(p<0.01). The MLE for cost function revealed that  lime(X₁) and fingerlings(X₅)  decreased the production cost, quantity of feed(X₃) (p<0.1) increased the cost among the beneficiaries. while quantity of feed(X₃), labour(X₄)  and pond size (X₇) on the other hand increased the production cost among the non-beneficiaries.  The cost inefficiency analysis further revealed that farming experience  decreased the cost efficiency but increased the economic efficiency and the  t-test showed significant difference (p<0.01) between the technical efficiencies of both sets of respondents. The beneficiaries are more efficient in terms of their technical, allocative and economic efficiencies than their non-beneficiary counterparts. The study recommends the expansion of the project scope to all the non-benefitting communities, provision of conducive environment for the establishment of ponds in all parts of the country to encourage more citizens to get into fish farming business and by extension, alleviate poverty status and un-employment in the state and country at large. The link between the Village Extension Agents (VEAs), Fadama Facilitators and the Fadama fish farmers should be strengthened through continual training and capacity building initiatives, if the objective of sustainably increasing Fadama farmers’ income is to be achieved.

Keywords: National Fadama Development Project II (NFDPII), Beneficiaries, Non-beneficiaries,  economic analysis, Production  efficiency , catfish production, Ogun state, Nigeria