Gender-differentiated stochastic meta-frontier analysis of production technology heterogeneity among smallholder cassava farmers in Ghana

Abstract

This paper assesses the differences in technical efficiency of, and the cassava production systems employed by, male-managed (MMF) and female-managed (FMF) cassava farms in the Fanteakwa District of Ghana. The study employs the translog stochastic meta-frontier model to analyse data obtained from 300 randomly selected smallholder cassava farmers and finds an average metafrontier technical efficiency (MTE) of 0.06 and 0.03 among MMF and FMF respectively. The technology gap ratios (TGR) are 0.25 and 0.04 for the MMF and FMF respectively. The results suggest that both MMFs and FMFs are technically inefficient. However, the production technology operated on MMFs is relatively superior to that operated on FMFs, as shown by the relatively higher TGR for MMFs. The results also reveal that proximity to markets, extension access, off-farm economic activities and formal education are the major contributors to the technical efficiency of the farmers.

Impacts of cassava whitefly pests on the productivity of East and Central African smallholder farmers

“…This implies that a 1% increase in the current level of land employed by farmers results in an increase of about 0.67% in cassava output. These findings are consistent with existing studies of cassava production systems in Africa, which show that land, cuttings, and labor are important determinants of cassava output (Eze and Nwibo, 2014;Dogba et al, 2021;Missiame et al, 2021;Tafesse et al, 2021). Tafesse et al (2021) found that land size, urea fertiliser application and cassava planting material all had a positive and significant effect on cassava production in Southern Ethiopia.…”

“…This finding aligns with that of Missiame et al (2021), who found that access to extension services improves the technical efficiency of smallholder cassava farmers in Ghana. Lastly, the coefficients of distance to market and district headquarters were positive and significant across the three countries.…”

“…We employed the SPF model to examine the impacts of the cassava whitefly pests and diseases on productivity in smallholder production systems. SPF models have been widely used to study TE of farming systems in several African countries (Sherlund et al, 2002;Tchale and Sauer, 2007;Liu and Myers, 2009;Eze and Nwibo, 2014;Debebe et al, 2015;Ainembabazi et al, 2017;Baffoe-Bonnie and Kostandini, 2019;Missiame et al, 2021;Taffesse et al, 2021). However, with the exception of Sherlund et al (2002), Baffoe-Bonnie and Kostandini (2019), many of the studies cited above neglect the influence of environmental factors such as pest and disease infestation, which may result in biased estimates of the production frontier.…”

“…Okoye et al (2016) reported a similar finding that female farmers were more technically efficient than male farmers among smallholder farmers in Madagascar. Missiame et al (2021) showed that female-managed cassava farms in Ghana were technically more efficient than male managed farms, with average TE of 0.92 and 0.23, respectively. Their findings depicted a relatively more efficient use of resources by female farmers compared to male farmers.…”

“…Their findings depicted a relatively more efficient use of resources by female farmers compared to male farmers. There is evidence that when individual characteristics and access to inputs are controlled, female managed farms are equally efficient as male managed farms (Seymour, 2017;Missiame et al, 2021). The difference was attributed to factors such as access to inputs and resource endowments.…”