In West Africa, crop-livestock mixed ~farming is emerging from the currently predominant nomadic pastoralism and agropastoralism. If is h?~pothesized that competitiveness bet,+peen crop and livestock enterprises may be un important determinant of' the pace of this evolution. A jield stud] in the derived savanna oj'south\tlest Nigeria showys that at the current stage of evolution, as a crop farmer add-y livestock to his business, there is a small gain in the beginning, then an increasing rate of substitution betkiqeen crop and Iil't'.~tockjollolz~. As a livestock rearer engages in crop production, there is a decreasing rtite @'substitution between livestock and crop. This situation derives ,fi;om the ,fhct that crop production is more intensive than livestock production, which depends principally on grazing natural pastures. Results indicate that (f increased population pressure and cropping intensity severely limit access to grazing land, .firrm and herd sizes )4+/l become smaller, then the degree qf' integration betltseen crop and livestock itill increase .rign@cant!l~.

The objective of the study is to provide a critical overview of Nigerian agricultural efficiency literature covering 1999–2011. A total of 156 frontier studies which yields 210 observations were used for the review. The preliminary findings from both the Funnel Plot and Funnel Asymmetry Test revealed that publication bias is not a severe problem in the selected literature. Our findings via univariate scatter plot and Spearman correlation provided evidence that reported efficiency scores positively correlated with the year of survey in the primary study. However, this observation might be an indication that positive efficiency change in the total factor productivity (TFP) growth characterized the development of Nigerian agricultural sector over the years. The average efficiency estimate from all the reviewed studies is about 0.71, thus suggesting, there is considerable room for improvement in the sector. To further distil important policy findings from the primary literature, we observed that 48 percent of the observations identified education as a significant determinant of efficiency in the Nigerian agriculture over the years. Likewise, experience was shown to be an important variable by 33 percent, while 23 percent identified age as a key determinant. Also, 19 percent showed that extension and family size are important. The directions of future research are also outlined.

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