The study examined the degree of competitiveness in the export demand for Nigerian rubber with focus on the Spanish Market. The study covered the periods of 1961-2010 and data comprised national aggregates. Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) approach was used in the estimation after instrumenting for simultaneity and establishing stationarity cum cointegration relationship. The outcome of the analysis showed that the demand for Nigerian rubber by Spain was affected negatively by export price of the commodity and income of the importing country. The coefficients of export price of the substitute crop and world production excluding participating countries traced out a positive relationship. The result further showed that there is relative competitiveness in the Spanish market on the strength of the Lerner index of 0.015. The study recommends the allocation of more resources to the export crop through deliberate budgetary allocation to the producing states and exchange rate stabilization policies are strongly advocated among others
This study examined optimum cropping patterns for selected root and tuber crop based production and resource allocation of smallholder farmers in Abia State, Nige ria, using the linear programming approach. The objective function was to maximize gross revenue from the production of selected root and tuber crop based production activities subject to land, labour and minimum subsistence family staple food consumption. Cost route approach was used to collect data from a random sample of 60 smallholder farmers in the state using the multistage stratified technique for location. The activities incorporated in the LP model include crop production activities, labour activities and product selling activities. Crop production activities comprise sole crops and crop mixtures. Existing selected crop activities were compared with their optimum counterparts. Resource allocation was compared between farm land owners and tenants wit h the aim of investigating their relative competitiveness in major root crop based production combination. Results showed that the sampled farmers were not optimal in their resource allocation. There was gross misallocation of labour for both land owners a nd tenant farmer. For the selected root and tuber crops, yam, cocoyam and cassava crop activities were found in their soles in the existing plan whereas crop mixtures were dominance in the optimal plan except cocoyam for the tenants’ category. However, optimal farm plans favoured fewer crops than in the existing plan. Cassava/melon, yam/maize and cocoyam/melon were the crop activities prescribed for an average land owner to maximize gross margin of N231,119.40K as against N190,265.00K in the existing plan (an increase of 21.48%) while for the farm tenants N 190,671.30K was prescribed as optimal gross margin as against N 184,600.00K (an increase of 3.29%) . Yam/melon and Cassava/cocoyam/maize had the least tendency to depress farm income if forced into the plan for the land owners and farm tenants respectively. Farmers’ purchasing power would be enhanced given optimal crop production activity combination and land resource allocation.
Resource use efficiency is the extent at which a firm or production unit makes proficient decisions by utilizing limited resources to maximize profit. Elasticity of production is a measure of a firm's success in producing maximum output from a set of input. This research analyzed resource use efficiency and elasticity of production among smallholder broiler producers in Ikwuano LGA of Abia State, Nigeria. Specific analytical techniques employed was the production function analysis involving the four functional forms of linear, double log (Cobb Douglas), semi-log and exponential. This was used to obtain the parameters for the measurement of resource use efficiency among the broiler producers. The results of the analysis shows that resource use efficiency (r) was 1.064, 0.018, -0.046 and 0.049 for quantity of broiler produced (stock size), labour expenses, cost of medicines/drugs and feed expenditure respectively. Stock size and feed expenses had the highest efficiency index of 1.064 and 0.049. The least efficiency index was recorded for medicines/drugs with a negative value of -0.046 which implied that the resource use efficiency for medicines/ drugs was grossly inefficient. The resource use efficiency for stock size/quantity of day-old-chicks shows that the resource was completely over used. The resource use efficiency with which poultry feeds were utilized shows that the quantity of feeds was over utilized. The elasticity of production of the smallholder broiler producers was 1.016 (ΣEp>1). This shows that, if all resources were to increase by 100%, output would increase by 101.6%. This implies that fixed resources (land, depreciated equipment) were abundant relative to variable resources (feed, dayold-chicks, medication and labour); yet, these fixed resources were not efficiently utilized due to lack of sufficient quantity of variable resources. There is a paramount need to increase variable resources in order to maximize profit.
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