Evaluation of gender differential in resource utilization and estimation of efficiency under accelerated rice production programme in Kogi State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out to evaluate numerically the gender differential of male and female rice farmers from the point of view of technical efficiency under accelerated rice production programme in Kogi State, Nigeria. A two stage systematic random sampling technique was used to select 216 irrigated rice farmers for this study. descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaire administered to 151 males and 65 females during 2016 – 2017 production season. The results of the stochastic production function showed that estimated coefficients of seed and labour were significant at p<0.01% and p<0.1 for both male and female rice farmers. Fertilizer (-0.208) was negative and significant at p<0.01% for female farmers and insignificant to male farmers while agrochemicals was positive and significant at p<0.01% for male and insignificant for female. The mean technical efficiency was 0.79 and 0.64 for the male and female farmers respectively implying that male farmers are more efficient than their counterpart. The study concludes that, the yield level in rice production among male and female farmers can be increased if the use of major variable inputs such as labour, seed and fertilizer influencing the output could be increased to 21 and 36 %, respectively. Findings further revealed that none of the sampled rice farms reached the frontier threshold due to farmer’s inefficiencies. This study recommends that since positive and significant relationship exist between seed and labour, the programme should train the farmers on use of productive resources and farm management skills which will enable the farmers to optimally utilize their variable inputs focusing on efficiency as their goal.