Technical efficiency of sole cowpea production in Adamawa State, Nigeria: A Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier function

Abstract

The stochastic frontier production model represents an improvement over the traditional average function and the deterministic functions, which use mathematical programming to construct production frontiers. The study was conducted to analyze the technical efficiency of sole cowpea production in the Northern part of Adamawa State using a stochastic frontier model. The result revealed that the variance of parameter (gamma and sigma squared) of the frontier production function was both significant at 10 and 1% levels. Farm size, seeds, agro-chemicals and hired labour were positive and had significant effect on output at 1%. The mean technical efficiency index was 0.89 while the minimum and maximum efficiency values were 0.55 and 0.95 respectively. This implies that the farmers were not fully efficient as the observed output was 11% less than the maximum output. Key words: Stochastic frontier, efficiency technical, production, sole cowpea.