K. OGUNDARI and S. O. OJO
Dept of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria
OGUNDARI, K. and S. O. OJO, 2007. An examination of technical, economic and allocative efficiency of small farms: the case study of cassava farmers in Osun state of Nigeria. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 13: 185-195
This study examined empirically productive efficiency of cassava farms in Osun state of Nigeria. Using farm level data, the study estimates a stochastic frontier production and cost functions model, which was used to predict the farm level technical and economic efficiencies. The predicted technical efficiency and economic efficiency are the basis for estimating allocative efficiency of the farms. Estimated results shows that cassava farms exhibits decrease positive return to scale judge by the value of return to scale (RTS) of 0.840 obtained from the analysis, meaning that cassava farmers were efficient in allocating their resources. Additionally, the analysis reveal that predicted efficiency measure disaggregated into technical ,economic and allocative efficiency with a view of examining not only TE but EE and AE when measuring productivity.However,the results of the predicted efficiency shows that mean TE,EE and AE of 0.903,0.89 and 0.807 were obtained respectively. Meaning that TE appears to be more significant than AE as a source of gain in EE. The policy implication of these findings is that cassava farms in the study area were efficient in allocating their resources considering their scope of operation and the limited resources.