In Ethiopia, wheat is becoming an essential source of income for farmers even though it is still a fundamental food crop. While the major proportion is kept for consumption, farmers sell part of their wheat produce. The main objectives of this paper are to assess the level of commercialization and its determinants of wheat producers in the four major producing regions. Quantitative primary data was collected from December 2013 to January 2014. The structured questionnaire was used to help collect quantifiable data from wheat producer households. Econometric tools were employed for the analysis of wheat producers' commercialization and its determinants. The findings indicate that about 27% of the wheat produced is being used for sale with the highest and lowest in Oromia (41%) and Tigray (17%) innovation platform sites, respectively. The results also reveal that most of the commercialization index falls within 25 and 50%. This indicates that wheat is becoming an essential cash crop to supplement household incomes. The empirical results of Tobit model show that educational level of head household, livestock size expressed in Tropical Livestock Unit (TLU), amount of wheat produced, and credit access, affect wheat commercialization positively and significantly while distance to the market and family size affect commercialization of farmers negatively. Finally, based on the findings of the research, some technical, institutional and policy that empower farmers through organizing in groups, training, and contractual arrangement with millers are needed to improve wheat productivity and linkage of wheat farmers to market.

Improving technical efficiency of smallholder farmers is one of the options to increase wheat yield in developing countries. This paper assesses technical efficiency, factors for inefficiency and the yield gap due to technical inefficiency in major wheat producing regions of Ethiopia, where the support to agricultural research for development of strategic crops (SARD-SC) wheat project has been implemented using primary data collected from 946 sample households operating 1616 wheat plots. One-step stochastic frontier approach with a Translog production form was used for econometric analysis. The results show that the mean technical efficiency of the overall sample is 0.769 meaning about 23% technical inefficiency in the system implying that the sample wheat producers are producing at a yield gap of 659 kg/ha. Different input variables contribute for wheat yield. It also reveals that education, oxen ownership, credit, soil fertility, using tractor, and using improved seed (in Tigray) were found to improve technical efficiency of wheat producers either for the overall or for some regions. On the contrary, family labor negatively affects efficiency in Oromia and in overall sample, while using improved seed (in Amhara and SNNP), plot distance and crop rotation (in Oromia) had a negative effect on technical efficiency.

Crop production and productivity are not only inevitably affected by level of adoption of improved technologies and external factors but also the technical efficiencies of producers. The main objectives of this study are to estimate technical efficiency of sample barley farmers, assess determinant factors and compute yield loss due to inefficiency. Plot level data from 180 barley growers were collected through three stage systematic random sampling procedures. A one-step maximum likelihood was used to estimate stochastic frontier translog production function to determine the level of technical efficiency and its determinant factors. The estimated value of technical efficiency ranges from 0.11 to 0.99 with an average of 0.53 allowing inefficiency gap of 0.47 indicating the opportunity to increase barley output by 47% by using the same inputs mix and existing technology. The study found sex, age and education level of the household head, distance to all weather roads, credit service, group membership, extension contact, training, plot fragmentation, tenure status, and investment in fertilizers significantly impact technical efficiency. The result suggests the need to involve female headed households into extension and trainings, increase the education level of households through informal and formal literacy, inspire household membership into farmers' groups and enable them to share best practices from model and more experienced farmers, inspire barley producers to invest on fertilizers and strengthen rural micro finance institutions to provide credit at some reasonable costs.