A Stochastic Frontier Analysis of Technical Efficiency of Maize Production Under Minimum Tillage in Zambia

Abstract

Minimum tillage and other conservation agriculture practices are not only associated with income gains but are also claimed to be the panacea to the declining agricultural productivity and soil degradation problems in Africa and across the world. The few studies on technical efficiency related to the agricultural sector performance in Zambia have not attempted to determine how technically efficient smallholder farmers that produce maize under minimum tillage are. This study used stochastic frontier analysis based on both the half-normal and exponential model distributions on 2008 cross-sectional nationally representative data of 160 smallholder maize farm households that adopted minimum tillage in Zambia. Results indicate that maize farmers face increasing returns to scale (1.074) implying that there were opportunities for them to improve their technical efficiency as they were operating in stage I of their production functions. The half-normal and exponential model distributions indicate average technical efficiency scores of 60 and 71.7 percent, respectively. Their respective lowest efficiency scores were 9.3 and 8.5 percent. The highest efficiency scores for the half-normal and exponential model distributions were 89.3 and 90.9 percent. Maximum likelihood estimation results show that marital status, level of education of household head, square of household size, off farm income, agro-ecological region III, distance to vehicular road and access to loans are statistically significant factors that affect technical efficiency of smallholder maize farmers that practice minimum tillage in Zambia. The study calls for increased infrastructural development through construction of improved road network, schools and colleges in remote areas as a means to increasing accesss to knowledge and other agricultural services in order to enhance their technical efficiency levels. It also recommends promotion of minimum tillage practices in recommended agro-ecological regions to improve their technical efficiency. The study further acclaims for increased access to loans by smallholder maize farmers that practice minimum tillage as this would in one way induce them to invest in improved varieties and equipment that would help enhance their technical efficiency in Zambia.

Examining the impact of conservation agriculture on environmental efficiency among maize farmers in Zambia

“…First, it differs from other productivity and efficiency studies on CA that assume a common technology for all production units by accounting for technology heterogeneity among farm households (for example, Ng'ombe and Kalinda, 2015). In spite of recent applications of a selectivity-corrected stochastic frontier model in efficiency measurement, this study is the first to employ the framework in the estimation of EE (for example, Bravo-Ureta et al, 2012;González-Flores et al, 2014;Villano et al, 2015).…”

Sources of Economic Growth in Zambia, 1970–2013: A Growth Accounting Approach

“…Some researchers have recently made considerable efforts to estimating productive efficiency in agriculture but none of them have explicitly incorporated estimates of agricultural TFP in Zambia. They have instead used partial measures such as technical efficiency in crop production in a selected region in Zambia (see: Chiona et al 2014;Musaba and Bwacha 2014;Ng'ombe and Kalinda 2015;Abdulai and Abdulai 2015). Though these measures are useful for providing sub-sectoral perspectives, they do not provide a broad outlook of general productivity growth of the agricultural sector.…”

Estimating Factors Affecting Technical Efficiency in Indian Manufacturing Sector

“…Stochastic frontier production function approach (SFPFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) are the two main techniques which can be used to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) of firms/industries and other sectors of the economy (Aigner, Lovell & Schmidt, 1977;Meeusen & Van den Broeck, 1977;Chavas & Aliber, 1993;Kumbhakar & Lovell, 2003;Rajesh, 2007;Faruq & Yi, 2010;Akpan et al, 2012;Pattnayak & Chadha, 2013;Kumar & Arora, 2012;Hamjah, 2014;Zhou, 2014;Mahajan, Nauriyal & Singh, 2014;Debnath & Sabastian, 2014;Bhatia & Mahendru, 2015;Munisamy, Fon & Khin, 2015;Sahu, 2015;Ng'ombe & Kalinda, 2015;Narwal & Pathneja, 2015;Ikram, Su & Sadiq, 2016); Okoye et al, 2016;Kea, Li & Pich, 2016;Vu, 2016;Fahmy-Abdullah et al, 2017;Gebresilassie, & Nyatanga, 2017;Singh, Narayanan & Sharma, 2018;Singh, Narayanan & Sharma, 2019). Efficiency is defined as the best allocation of resources to achieve the highest level of output (Bhatia & Mahendru, 2015).…”

“…SFPFA model produces regression coefficients of explanatory variables that have a significant association with output, including TE. It can be used in the case of parametric and non-parametric conditions (Ng'ombe & Kalinda, 2015;Okoye et al, 2016). Existing researchers have used SFPFA model to investigate the impact of various factors on output and to examine the TE of individual firm (Akpan et al, 2012;Pattnayak & Chadha, 2013;Zhou, 2014;Sahu, 2015;Ikram, Su & Sadiq, 2016); Vu, 2016;Fahmy-Abdullah et al, 2017).…”