Relative Economic Efficiency of Mechanized and Non-Mechanize Rice Farmers in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined the economic efficiency of resources used in rice production among mechanized and non mechanized farmers in Nasarawa state, Nigeria. Data were collected from a randomly sample of 132 farmers (66 non-mechanized and 66 mechanized) and analyzed using gross margin, farm financial ratio and regression analysis. The result revealed a difference of N13,900 in cost of production, N48,000 in revenue realized, N34,100 in gross margin and N19,100 in net profit accrued from the used of mechanization. The coefficient of farm size and fertilizer are positive and statistically significant at (P<0.1) under non mechanized rice farms, for mechanized farms, all the variables are positive and statistically significant. Mechanized rice farmers used there inputs close to economic optimum with efficiency ratio of 0.98, 0.95 and 0.94 for labour, farm size and seed respectively, compare to 0.58, 0.46 and 0.71 of the same inputs used by non mechanized rice farmers, while fertilizer 3.16 and 56.32 was under utilized for both mechanized and non mechanized. For optimum allocation of resources, labour (101.68%), farm size (106.28%) and seed (105.41%) were over utilized in mechanized farms, labour (172.25%), farm size (115.10%) and seed (140.56%) were over utilized in non mechanized farms and Fertilizer having (98% and 68%) was under utilized in both mechanized and non mechanized rice farms respectively. The results show that a lot need to be done to bridge the gap for optimum use of the resources under non mechanized rice production. The results also show that there is need for making inputs such as fertilizer affordable and accessible to the farmers so as to improve production efficiency. Also policies that encourage the use of farm machinery to absorb the excess labour cost in rice production in the study area should be formulated.