Economic Efficiency of Irrigated Vegetable Production in Borno State Nigeria: A Stochastic Frontier Cost Function Approach

Abstract

This study analysed the economic efficiency of irrigated vegetable producers in Borno State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used to select the respondents. Structured survey questionnaires were used and administered to 300 respondents to obtain primary data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data obtained. Descriptive statistics used were mean, frequency and percentage. The inferential statistics used was stochastic frontier cost function to analyze the level and determinants of economic inefficiency in the studied enterprises. The result of the socio-economic indicated that almost all (99.7 percent) of the respondents were male with 45.9 percent of them falling on the age range between 41-50 years. About 46 percent of the respondents had household size ranging between 6-10 persons. The result

Technical efficiency of onion production in Kebbi State: A Stochastic frontier production function approach

“…This depicts that as the level of education and family size of the onion producer increased in the study area, the technical inefficiency of the onion producers decreases. This is also as reported by Shettima et al(2016) and Omotoso et al (2021). The coefficient of farming experience was 0.1136 which is positive and significant at10% level of significance.…”

“…This coefficient of labour shows that an increase of one unit of labour while keeping other variable inputs in the model fixed there will be a corresponding increase in mean output by 0.1700 bags. This result is in line with the independent reports of many researches on related work in Nigeria, including the works of Nsikakabasi et al (2011), Shettima et al (2016) and Omotoso et al (2021) who reported positive coefficient of labour and statistically significant at 10%, 1% and 5% respectively. In this study area, the use of traditional farming implements is the commonest practice due to subsistence level of farming, thus, human labour plays an important role in the production of onion.…”

“…These findings compare favourably with other several studies on technical efficiency conducted in onion and other areas of agriculture. For instance, (Ojo et al, 2009;Earfan and Samad, 2013;and Shettima et al, 2016).…”

Evaluation of Onion Value Chain Actors in Kebbi State, Nigeria: A Case Study of Producers and Retailers

“…The dominance of male over female in onion production activities as observed in this study may be due to cultural and religious belief virtually embraced and practiced by the populace in the study area which discourages women from going out freely to engage in farming operations, hence limiting their participation in onion production. These findings tallied favourably with the results of [10] on Vegetable production in Borno State, Nigeria and reported that females were dominated by male folks and this may be due to tiresome labour in irrigation farming activities, ease of access to farmland and religious background in the study area. Similarly, majority of the retailers (82.5%) were males with few (17.5%) females participating in the value chain.…”

“…The effect of this result is that the non-participation of the majority of the producers does not enjoy the added advantages of cooperative membership for optimal profit. The outcome of this research work collaborates with the results of [10] who indicated that majority (65.9%) of the respondents were not members of any association/cooperatives. Thus, the level of participation and non-participation in cooperative could be attributed to the level of farmers' awareness of the benefits accrued to the cooperative members.…”