Allocative Efficiency of Rice Production in Cross River State, Nigeria: A Production Function Approach

The paper analyzed the efficiency of resource utilization in rice production in Cross River State, Nigeria. The population of this study comprises of all the small scale rice farmers in Cross River State. A multistage sampling technique was used to collect data from 219 rice farmers using a well structured questionnaire. Cobb-Douglas Stochastic production frontier function and marginal analysis were used for the analysis. The result revealed that there was gross inefficiency in the allocation of productive resources among small scale rice farmers in the study areas. Apart from fertilizer which had allocative efficiency index of 0.50, inputs such as farm size (282.90), labour(1.97), seed(241.80), pesticide(223.12), and herbicide(194.05) were under-utilized implying sub-optimal resource allocation in rice farming among small scale rice farmers in Cross River State, Nigeria. The result further revealed that 99.6 percent adjustment is required for optimum utilization in farm size, seed and pesticide, 49.2 percent required for labour, 99.5 percent required for herbicide. Conversely fertilizer was over-utilized and required 98.2 percent reduction. The results equally revealed that cost of fertilizer (99.1percent), pest and disease attack(96.3percent), cost of labour(95.9percent) and weed control(90.0percent) were found to be the major constraint of rice farmers in the study area. The study recommends that In order to improve efficiency in resource allocation in rice production more of farm size, labour, seed, pesticide and herbicide should be utilized.