English

Abstract

Cassava production seems to be economically viable but there seems to exist no empirical documented evidence to this effect in Ika North East L.G.A of Delta State, Nigeria. In view of this, the study analyzed the economic and technical efficiency of cassava production in Ika North East Local Government Area of Delta State. A multistage random sampling was used to select a total of 120 respondents used for the study. Data used for the study was from primary source, which was collected using a well structured questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data based on the objective of the study. The result obtained showed that females (52.5%) are more than males. Majority (50%) of the respondents are married with an average household size of 6. The result further showed that the farmers were in their middle age (42 years) and had acquired reasonable years of farming experience of 10 years. More than half of the farmers had attended formal educational and earn average annual income of N180,000.00. The production systems practiced by the farmers was mono cropping. Cassava production was profitable in the area with a profit margin of N200,400.00 per a hectare. The Benefit Cost Ratio shows that in every N1.00k invested by farmers, N1.00k was realized as profit. The multiple regression result showed R2 value of 0.833 or 83.3%. The coefficients of farm size, labour and cassava stem were positively signed. Farm size, labour, fertilizer and cassava cuttings were underutilized because their efficiency index was greater than one. The cassava farmers identified some of the factors that constrained their farming activities to include: lack of access to credit, high cost of transportation, poor extension services, among others. Based on the findings, it is therefore recommended that farmers should organize themselves into cooperative societies so as to access credit; viable extension service should be provided bridge the extension need of the farmers and effective transportation system to ease evacuation of cassava produce to urban centre where the demands are high. Key words: Costs and returns, profitability, production system, constraints, input/output.