Farm-level production efficiency of smallholder rice farmers in Southwest, Nigeria

An efficient food production system is a panacea for better output among farming households. However, this is not the case for Nigerian farmers who lacked access to resources for optimum food production thereby their productivity potential were undermined. Based on this premise, this study aimed to investigate the production efficiency of rice farming households in Southwest Nigeria using secondary data from the ECOWAS-RAAF-PASANAO Project. The study extracted data from 278 rice farming households sampled across six states in southwestern, Nigeria from the master data set. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and Tobin regression model. The results revealed that the majority of the rice farmers were male in their active and productive age and with low educational level. 62.9% of them had access to extension service and 64.7% had no access to credit. The average land area cultivated and the rice output of the respondents were 1.65 ha and 3123.57 kg, respectively, indicating smallholder and low productivity farm households. The result of the stochastic frontier analysis revealed that farm size, labour, herbicide and fertilizer were the factors that significantly increased the rice output, while the prices of land, tractor, herbicide and rice input significantly increased the production cost. The mean technical, allocative and economic efficiency of rice farmers were 0.62, 0.638 and 0.47 respectively, suggesting a potential for increasing rice production using the current technology, prices and fixed level of resources. Rice farmers’ production efficiency was significantly determined by gender, education, access to credit and extension contacts. The government policy intervention should address the efficiency challenges of the rice farmers in the study area. Keywords: farm-level, production efficiency, rice, smallholder, southwest