Analysis of optimum combination of integrated crop-livestock enterprise in North-West, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was conducted to determine the optimum combination of integrated crop-livestock enterprises in north-west, Nigeria. Primary data were obtained through structured questionnaire and interview schedule. A multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to select 3 states, 3 zones, 21 LGAs, 84 villages, and 428 crop-livestock farmers made up of 178, 128 and 122 farmers in Kaduna, Kano and Katsina states respectively. Descriptive statistics and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to achieve the objective of the study. The results of socio-economic characteristics showed that about 89% of the pooled farmers were male with mean age of 48 years and household size of 10 persons per farmer. The findings from DEA revealed the mean total efficiency, pure efficiency and scale efficiency of 0.79, 0.91 and 0.86 respectively. DEA results further indicated that farmers can reduce the quantity of farm size, labour, seed, fertilizer, manure and agrochemical inputs by 0.2, 12.9, 17.6, 6.6, 35.9 and 26.4 %, respectively. Results further specified that 17.3, 26.25 and 56.5 % of farmers operated at optimal, sub-optimal and super-optimal scale, respectively. Tobit regression model used to determine factors influencing technical efficiency established that coefficients of age (0.0210), marital status (0.0016), household size (0.0616), education level (-0.1247), farming experience (0.1412), extension contact (-0.2548) and cooperative membership (-0.1102) were statistically significant variables at different level of probability. There should be synergy between crop and animal scientists; extension agents and agricultural economists to bring into bearing the needs for farmers to imbibe integrated crop-livestock farming to achieve optimum level of efficiency.