Abstract
Maize is one of the major five staple cereal crops in Ethiopia. High productivity and efficacy in its production is critical to improve food security, reduce the level of poverty and achieve or maintain agricultural growth. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 385 household heads and interviewed using a structured questionnaire during 2013/2014 production year. The study estimates, technical, allocative and economic efficiency using a parametric stochastic frontier production function (Cobb-Douglas). Inefficiency effects are modeled in a second stage applying a two-limit Tobit regression model. The results show that the mean technical, allocative and economic efficiency score was found to be 62.3, 57.1 and 39%, respectively, indicating a substantial level of inefficiency in maize production. The result depicted that important factors that affected technical, allocative and economic efficiency are a number of family size, level of education, extension service, cooperative membership, farm size, livestock holding and use of mobile. Based on the findings the following recommendations are forwarded. The government should motivate and mobilize the youth in agricultural activities, invest in the provision of basic education and facilitate the necessary materials, strengthen the existing agricultural extension system, organize non-member farmers in cooperative association and due attention should be given to enhance the efficiency of farmers with large land holding size. Further, government and stakeholders should promote the expansion of mobile networking in the study area. Key words: Efficiencies, parametric stochastic approach, two-limit Tobit model, Ethiopia.
Highlights
The agriculture sector in Ethiopia plays pivotal roles in economic growth, poverty alleviation, employment creation, foreign exchange earnings and food security
The standard ordinary least squares (OLS) estimate is presented for comparison
The results show that all coefficient estimates are significant at one percent level of significance and have expected signs thereby determining maize production in the Jimma zone of southwestern Ethiopia
Summary
The agriculture sector in Ethiopia plays pivotal roles in economic growth, poverty alleviation, employment creation, foreign exchange earnings and food security. Debebe et al 283 in particular over the past years (Alemayehu, 2009; Alemayehu et al, 2012) Such low productivity leads to increasing poverty and food insecurity of rural poor farm households in the country. The government and NGOs have undertaken various attempts to enhance agricultural productivity that of cereal crops so as to achieve food security and to reduce poverty in the country. The available studies on the productivity of cereal crops in general and maize production in particular in Ethiopia found low productivity in comparison with the international standards (Alemayehu, 2009), the current average national maize productivity of Ethiopia (32.54 quintal per ha) is better than the national productivity of many African countries. The average maize productivity ranged from 39.42 quintal per ha (West Gojam zone) to 14.45 quintal per ha (Waghemra zone) in Amhara region.
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