Crop diversification is a climate-smart agricultural technique which helps to improve resilience for farmers in the face of volatile weather due to climate change. Previous research on its effects on technical efficiency has shown mixed results. Despite burgeoning literature on the subject, an important research question that remains uninvestigated is: does crop diversification involve a compromise between technical efficiency and resilience (income stability) for rural farmers? Using nationally representative rural household survey data from Zambia, this study empirically answers this research question. We employ the Data Envelopment Approach (DEA) for efficiency and a two- step least-squares approach for income variability. Our results show evidence that crop diversification significantly improves income stability but significantly reduces technical efficiency. The paper provides useful implications for policies that promote crop diversification in Zambia and other countries.

The traditional approach to modeling productive efficiency assumes that technology is constant across the sample. However, farms in different regions may face different production opportunities, and the technologies they employ may differ due to environmental factors. Therefore, rather than using a traditional stochastic frontier model in such cases, a stochastic meta-frontier (SMF) analysis is recommended to account for environmental factors between regions. It follows that differences in environmental factors between the upland and lowland regions in Anambra State, Nigeria, may result in farmers producing rice under different production and environmental conditions. Using the SMF model, this study, for the first time, determines technical efficiency (TE) and technological gap ratios (TGRs) of rice production from the upland and lowland regions in the Awka North Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria. Our data are from a cross-section sample of randomly selected rice farmers. Results reveal that lowland regional rice producers are on average, significantly more technically efficient (91.7%) than their upland counterparts (84.2%). Additionally, mean TGRs associated with lowland rice farmers are higher (92.1%) than their corresponding upland producers (84.7%). While the upland rice producers are less technically efficient and further away from their full potential, results indicate that both sets of farmers do not use advanced technologies to match the industry’s potential. We suggest that agricultural policy should focus on providing regionally specific technologies, such as improved rice varieties that fit the working environment of the lagging area, to help rice farmers improve their resource efficiency and minimize technological gaps.

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This study examines the effect of quantity sold (sales volume) on profitability of market participating smallholder farmers in northern Ghana. Market participation has been shown to be important for increasing incomes and improving production efficiency for farm households but still remains low in SSA. While agribusiness and development experts generally advocate for more intensive market participation, it is not clear if selling more results in more profits for smallholder farmers in remote markets that are prone to exorbitant transaction costs. The data used in this study is from the APS survey conducted in 2013 and 2014 in Northern Ghana which had a sample size of 527. The study is based on the theory of profit maximization, in which separability is inferred from observed market participation. OLS regression is used for empirical estimation after rejecting the hypothesis of endogeneity in the model. Mean gross margin/ kg across four groups of farmers ranked by quantity sold is also statistically examined. The results confirm the existence of economies of scale and also show that different crops have different effects on profitability. The results also show that although unambiguously positive, the relationship between quantity sold and profitability may not be linear.