Article Sidebar
Article Details
Open access articles published in the Journal of Agriculture, Science and Technology are under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The CC BY license permits commercial and non-commercial re-use of an open-access article, as long as the author is properly attributed.
Copyright on any research article published in the Journal of Agriculture, Science and Technology is retained by the author(s). The authors grant the Journal of Agriculture, Science and Technology with a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher. Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
Use of the article in whole or in part in any medium requires proper citation as follows:
Title of Article, Names of the Author, Year of Publication, Journal Title, Volume (Issue) and page. Links to the final article on the JSRE website are encouraged.
The Creative Commons Attribution License does not affect any other rights held by authors or third parties in the article, including without limitation the rights of privacy and publicity. Use of the article must not assert or imply, whether implicitly or explicitly, any connection with, endorsement or sponsorship of such use by the author, publisher or any other party associated with the article.
For any reuse or distribution, users must include the copyright notice and make clear to others that the article is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution license, linking to the relevant Creative Commons web page. Users may impose no restrictions on the use of the article other than those imposed by the Creative Commons Attribution license.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the article is made available as is and without representation or warranties of any kind whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise and including, without limitation, warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, absence of defects, accuracy, or the presence or absence of errors.
Main Article Content
Application of stochastic frontier approach model to assess technical efficiency in Kenya’s maize production
Abstract
Kenya realised tremendous growth in maize production between 1964 and 1997, fueled by the introduction of high yielding hybrid maize. However, from 1997, there has been a decline in yield from 1.85 to 1.57 metric tones per hectare with observed supply shortages occasionally. Maize shortages result in famine among the poor urban and rural households. Since almost all the arable land is under cultivation, future increase in maize production will heavily depend on technical efficiency and yield improvement rather than expansion in area under production. The main objective of this study was to determine the technical efficiency of smallholder maize production in Kenya. The stochastic frontier model was used as the method of analysis to estimate several production function forms using crosssectional household data for the 2003/2004 main cropping season. Variations in technical efficiency index across smallholder farm units were explained through a number of socio-economic, farm characteristic and Agro-Ecological Zone variables. The results of the translog functional form revealed that the technical efficiency index across smallholder farm units ranged from 8 to 98 percent. Purchased hybrid
seeds, use of tractors for land preparation, number of school years of household head, male headed households, age of household head, access to credit and high potential zone dummy variables had a negative sign, and therefore decreased technical inefficiency (increased technical efficiency). Calculations of marginal effects showed that purchased inputs and primary education had the highest improvement of technical efficiency i.e. hybrid seed (36%), tractor services (26%) and an extra year of household head primary schooling (0.84%). It is therefore concluded that improvement of maize input markets together with an emphasis on
primary school education would enhance maize productivity. Thus, if hybrid seeds, tractor services and agricultural credit are made available and affordable to farmers technical efficiency would increase.
Key words: Socio-economic factors, farm characteristics, maize
