Determination of Technical and Allocative Efficiency of Seed Replaced and Non-Seed Replace Smallholder Maize Farmers in North-West, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined technical and allocative efficiency of seed replaced and non-seed replace smallholder maize enterprises in north-west, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling was used to select 374 smallholder maize farmers who replaced seed and those not in Kaduna, Kano and Katsina. Cross-sectional data was collected using structured questionnaires and the data was analysed using SPSS version 20 and stochastic frontier 4.1 for the following: descriptive statistics and technical, allocative and economic efficiencies. The mean age of the farmers was 46 years; 48.7% had 10 – 19 years of experience and 74.1% had formal education with the mean household size of 12 people. From the findings, majority of the farmers 55.1% belongs to farmers associations with a minimum household income of N60,000 per annum. The coefficients of seed and labour were positive and significant for both groups but seed replaced farmers group had higher coefficient for seed. From the result 53.47% of the seed replaced farmers fall within the technical efficiency range of 0.01 – 0.50. Inadequate seed management information was ranked 1^st constraints to the seed replaced farmers while non-seed replace farmers ranked low fodder yield as their 1^st constraints to seed replacement. The study concluded that seed replacement had significant influence on the smallholder maize farmers’ productivity and resource efficiency and also recommended encouraging other farmers to join cooperatives societies; resource adjustment by the farmers to improve efficiency; seed system monitoring by the National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) be strengthen; and seminars/campaign to build capacity of the downstream seed marketers and farmers by the government, researchers and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).