Technical Efficiency of Onion Production among Smallholder Farmers in Wukari Local Government Area, Taraba State, Nigeria

Onion (Allium cepa L.) is an important vegetable crop widely used as a condiment. Globally, China and India dominate production, while Nigeria ranks 16th with an annual output of 1.40 million metric tons (1.43% of global production). This study analyzed the technical efficiency of onion production in Wukari Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria. The study used snowballing to obtained the sample frame and simple random sampling techniques to select primary data from 178 onion farmers during the 2023 farming season. Descriptive statistics and the Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production function were used to analyzed the data. The average onion output of the survey farms was 5,282 kg/ha. On average, the quantity of seed used was 4.7 kg/ha, fertilizer 216 kg/ha, agrochemicals 1.2 liters per hectare (l/ha), and labour work was 48 man-days per hectare, respectively. The mean age and household size of the farmers were 41 years and 8 persons, respectively. The majority (78.7%) of the respondents had some form of formal education, and the average farming experience of the farmers was 15.7 years. An estimate of the Cobb-Douglas production function shows that the average technical efficiency of the farmers stood at 86% (0.8609), with a minimum of 50% (0.5066) and a maximum of 98% (0.985), respectively. The inefficiency model shows that household size, education level and farming experience are factors that significantly reduce technical inefficiency. The study concludes that onion producers in the study area were technically efficient but below the frontier level. To boost the output of onion production, the study recommends that government and non-governmental organizations should subsidize the cost of farming inputs, farmers should be encouraged to improve educational attainment., and they should utilize their extensive experience to involve family members in onion farming to mitigate the high costs associated with hired labour.