COMPARATIVE TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF PARTICIPANTS AND NON-PARTICIPANTS IN THE KOGI ACCELERATED RICE PRODUCTION PROGRAMME, KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

¹Haruna, O. E. & ²Damisa, M. A.

¹Department of Economics, Salem University Lokoja, Kogi State.

²Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria

Email:

Abstract: In this paper a stochastic frontier was applied to cross-sectional data randomly collected from 162 participants and 162 non-participants of the Kogi Accelerated Rice Production Programme in order to compare their technical efficiencies. Our results revealed that both participants and non-participants of the programme are technically efficient with mean technical efficiency of 0.959 (95.6%) and 0.826(82.6%) respectively. These results indicate that the technical efficiency of the participants is higher than the technical efficiency of non-participants. A log-likelihood ratio (LR) test statistic of 38.504 (15df) means that the technical efficiency of participants and non-participants are significantly different. We recommend that measures should be taken to improve farmers’ access to education, credit facilities, land and extension contact as these would make them to be more efficient.

Keywords: Technical Efficiency, Irrigation, Rice, Participants, Non-participants.