An investigation of technical inefficiency of production of farmers under the National Directorate of Employment in Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate technical inefficiency of production among the food crop farmers of the National Directorate of Employment in Ondo state of Nigeria. The study considers translog stochastic frontier production functions in which the technical inefficiency effects are defined by three different sub models. Given the specifications of the stochastic frontier production function, the null hypothesis, that the frontier is adequately represented by the Cobb-Douglas function, is accepted, but the null hypothesis that the farmers are fully technically efficient, which implies that inefficiency effects are absent from the model, is rejected. Further, the null hypothesis of half-normal distribution for the inefficiency effects is rejected. Predicted technical efficiencies vary widely across farms, ranging between 21.7% anal 87.8% and a mean technical efficiency of 67%.