TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF USAID MARKETS II BENEFICIARY SMALL-SCALE RICE FARMERS IN KANO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The challenge of food insecurity made most of the intervention agencies in sub-Saharan Africa to tilt their goal towards increase in productivity. This desire still remains a myth as the farm resource productivity of the major clienteles- smallholder farmers that are the pivot of food security is very poor. In lieu of the foregoing, this research attempted to determine the technical efficiency of USAID MARKETS II in Nigeria’s Kano State using a total of 189 beneficiary farmers obtained through a multi-stage sampling technique. A well-structured questionnaire complemented with interview schedule was used for data elicitation and the collected data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The empirical finding showed that none of the farmers was a frontier farmer as their efficiency scores fell below the frontier surface. However, more than half of the farmers are fairly efficient as their efficiency score exceeded the average score of 0.8639, thus very close to the frontier. On the average, it can be inferred that the technical units have the scope to expand their technical efficiency by 13.61%, thus bridging the output lost of 311kg. Besides, the technical efficiency was inhibited by extension gap, thus the need to create an enabling environment viz. adequate market linkage for the farmers thereby enhancing the going concern of the farm business.