There is high demand for food commodities due to population growth in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the agricultural productivity remains low making it difficult to meet this increased food demand. Therefore a need arose to improve agricultural productivity, including the productivity of the rice industry in Ghana. This study analysed the factors influencing the efficiency of Ghana's rice industry using the stochastic metafrontier model. A total of 470 smallholder rice producers from two districts in Upper East region were selected for the study. The empirical results reveal that the rice producers are technically inefficient and operating below the metafrontier. The results also indicate that the factors that influence farmers' technical efficiency level are different between the two districts. Results also indicate that technology adoption or use of improved production practices increase the technical efficiency of rice farmers. Based on the results it is recommended that policy-makers and researchers develop district specific recommendations, and determine how the adoption of improved technology can be increased.

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South African agriculture is a dualist agricultural system with well-developed commercial farmers and resource-poor smallholder farmers. In an effort to address the dualist nature of agriculture, the South African government has developed a strategic plan to assist smallholder farmers in entering commercial markets. The strategic plan aims to advance subsistence and smallholder farmers into commercial production through improved resource management for sustainable food security and smallholder livelihood. However, the productivity of smallholder farmers continues to be very low compared with that of commercial farmers. Our aim was to compare tomato productivity for commercial and smallholder tomato farmers in the Nkomazi area (Mpumalanga Province) using a metafrontier analysis. We used an output-oriented data envelopment analysis metafrontier approach and the Tobit model to investigate smallholder and commercial farmers’ technical efficiencies and related factors which affect tomato production. Results indicate that smallholder farmers have high levels of technical efficiency compared to the group frontier (0.74), but they are less technically efficient compared to the metafrontier (0.51). The group efficiencies of the smallholder farmers also showed a large variation ranging from 3% to 100%, while commercial farmers have high levels of efficiency compared to both the group frontier (0.89) and the metafrontier (0.88). Results from the Tobit regression indicate that farmers’ managerial decisions are an important determinant of their technical efficiency. We conclude that smallholder farmers first need to increase their level of technical efficiency relative to their peers before aiming to compete with commercial farmers. Significance: • Smallholder farmers should first improve their resource use efficiency compared to their fellow smallholder farmers before they consider comparing themselves against the commercial farmers.

Salinisation threatens the sustainability of irrigation agriculture and needs to be managed through leaching practices. Under conditions of water scarcity a tradeoff exists between allocating water for salinity management and production. Currently no model in South Africa is able to model explicitly the impact of salinity management through leaching on the economic efficiency of irrigation farming, taking the opportunity cost of water under limited water supply conditions into consideration. The main objective of this paper is to develop a robust non-linear optimisation model that is able to determine endogenously the impact of declining irrigation water quality on the economic efficiency of irrigation farming. A data envelopment framework was used to integrate recently developed soil water salinity crop-yield production functions and leaching functions to model the complex interactions involved in water allocation decisions. Results showed that it is profitable to reduce the area irrigated under limited water supply conditions in order to release water for leaching purposes. When more water, but still a limited amount of water, is allocated to the farmer, his willingness to pay for water will increase if irrigation water deteriorates. Thus, the conclusion is that leaching is profitable irrespective of the water supply conditions.

Agriculture is considered as a leading source of employment while ensuring food security to the world and especially rural communities. However, the youth do not appear to be interested in the agricultural sector due to various reasons such as their perceptions and aspirations towards the sector. This research intends to explore whether perceptions, aspirations and access to resources affect youth participation in agriculture and related economic activities, under rain-fed production in two regions of the Free State province of South Africa. Principal component analysis was used to determine perception dimensions, while a probit model was used to investigate the effect of capital (human, social, physical, financial and natural), the perception dimensions and the respondents’ agricultural aspirations on agricultural participation. The results showed that the aspirations of youth do not affect their decision to participate in the agricultural sector. However, exposure to agriculture and support systems can increase youth participation in the industry. Results also show that grants, which are an easy source of income, and the uneducated and comfort perception dimension hinders youth participation in agriculture.

The purpose of the paper is to determine the influence of different factors used by a formal credit institution to evaluate loan applications in the agricultural sector. The research attempts to capture the actual factors considered by credit institutions rather than the traditional factors found in literature. Loan applications from 128 farmers, predominantly commercial farmers, were obtained from a credit institution with branches situated in various provinces of South Africa. Data consisted of loan application information which is broader than the financial information normally obtained in credit research, and the final decision of the credit provider. Principal component logistic regression was used to investigate the likeliness with which loan application variables influence the outcome of the loan application. Results indicate that loan applications that are more likely to be successful are older more experienced farmers, who can provide sufficient collateral, have more years of business with the credit provider, have an acceptable credit history, request smaller loan amounts, have lower interest expense ratio, higher production cost ratios, and have diversification strategies. This paper contributes to knowledge on information used by financial credit providers (institutions) in classifying agricultural loan applications as successful as guided by actual factors used in credit decision making by the credit provider.

Predation is a well-known problem in South Africa with large losses in the small and large livestock sectors. Predation in the wildlife ranching industry has also become more of a concern, as the financial losses due to predation on valuable antelope species are large. Predation data for small, large, and scarce/colour-variant antelope Cependant, les m ethodes de contrôle de la pr edation sont sp ecifiques a l'esp ece d'antilope, et il faut donc tenir compte de l'esp ece en question pour prendre des d ecisions en mati ere de gestion