Technical Efficiency of Rain-Fed Irish Potato Farmers in Plateau State, Nigeria: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

Abstract

This study estimated technical efficiencies and identified the determinants of technical efficiencies of rain-fed Irish potato farmers in Plateau State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling techniques involving purposive and random sampling was used to obtain data from a study sample of 227 respondents using structured questionnaires during the 2012/2013 cropping season. Data were analyzed using stochastic frontier production function. Results showed that rain-fed Irish potato farmers were experiencing decreasing return to scale in the use of farm resources. This is confirmed by the estimated return to scale parameter of 0.958. The study also showed that technical efficiency ranges from 2.37% to 95.6% with a mean technical efficiency of 74%. This widely varying indices of technical efficiency among the rain-fed Irish potato farmers indicates great potential to achieve productivity growth through improved efficiency using existing technologies and the available resource base in the study area. The determinants of technical efficiencies were education, farming experience, potato variety and off-farm income. The study recommended that policies that would directly affect the identified determinants of technical efficiency be pursued by the relevant authorities.

Keywords: Technical efficiency, inefficiency, stochastic frontier, Irish-potato, Plateau State, rain-fed production.