Analysis of Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Cocoa Farmers in Cross River State, Nigeria

The technical efficiency involved in cocoa production inCross River State was estimated using the stochastic frontierproduction function analysis. The effects of some selected socio-economic characteristics of the farmers on the efficiencyindices were also estimated. The study relied upon primary datagenerated from interviewing cocoa farmers using a set ofstructured questionnaire. A multi-staged random sampling techniquewas adopted in selecting two hundred (200) cocoa farmersfrom Ikom Agricultural Zone in the state. The data on the socioeconomiccharacteristics of the farmers were analyzed usingdescriptive statistics, while the stochastic production function,using the Maximum Likelihood Estimating (MLE) techniqueswas used in estimating the farmer’s technical efficiency andtheir determinants. Result of the analysis showed that farmerswere experiencing decreasing but positive returns to scale in theuse of the farm resources. The efficiency level ranged between0.20 and 0.93 with a mean of 0.69. The result of the generalizedLikelihood Ratio (LR) tests confirmed that the cocoa farmers inthe area were technically inefficient. The major contributingfactors to efficiency were age of farmers, farm size, level of education, sex of farmer and age of the farms. The study observedthat there is enough room to improve efficiency with thefarmers’ current resource base and available technology andconcluded that policies that would directly affect these identifiedvariables should be pursued.