Comparative analysis of technical efficiency of catfish farms using different technologies in Lagos State, Nigeria: a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach

Abstract

Background: There is no gainsaying the fact that demand for proteins has continuously outweighed supply in Nigeria. This is largely due to the rising population on one part and the low level of technology to cope with changing production practices specifically in the fishery sub-sector and agricultural production in general on the other part. The resultant effect of this is the widening demand and supply gap which often culminate in farmers devising different technologies or approaches to mediate the shortfall. This study therefore examined comparative analysis of technical efficiency among catfish producers using different construction designs in Lagos State, Nigeria. A sample consisting of 43 earthen catfish producers, 33 cage culture and 37 plastics tank was selected from three agricultural zones in the state. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, budgetary and profitability analysis, regression analysis and Data Envelopment Analysis approach. Results and main findings: Overall average technical efficiency estimates obtained under the Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) and Constant Returns to Scale (CRS) specification for earthen catfish producers were 0.92 and 0.73, respectively. The overall average technical efficiency estimates for VRS and CRS specification under cage culture catfish producers were 0.92 and 0.79, respectively, and overall mean estimates obtained for VRS and CRS specification under plastic tank catfish producers were 0.95 and 0.69, respectively. However, for CRS under earthen pond, two variables, sex and age of farmer with t values of − 2.10 and 1.82, were equally significant. Again, for CRS under cage culture, two variables were significant, and these were years of formal education and primary occupation with t values of − 2.09 and 2.16. Under CRS for plastic tank, two variables-age and religion with t values of 2.04 and 1.99-were significant at 5 and 10%, respectively. Conclusions: The study concludes that the most efficient and profitable construction designs among earthen, cage culture and plastic tank are the earthen pond. This is because of its cost-effectiveness in terms of design and management as well as the limited impact on the environment. As indicated, years of formal education were significant in all the designs revealing that education plays a pivotal role in efficiency. The implication of the findings is that famers should be better educated on the dangers inherent in polluting water bodies to avoid contamination (since the earthen pond is the most efficient) to enhance catfish production if the much desired production increase is to be sustained.

Analysis of the Resource Management Ability by Catfish Farmers in Nigeria: A Case of Ogbaru Local Government Area, Anambra State

“…81.4% of the farmers practice catfish farming with concrete ponds while the remaining 18.6% uses earthen ponds, with the annual mean fish output of 5.297 tons. This result corroborates Oluwatayo & Adedeji [12]. Furthermore, 67.4% of the farmers rear Clarias/Heterobranchus to corroborate with the study of Otubusin [6].…”

“…The findings show that the profit realized from earthen, cage and plastic pond was 41,904 USD, 5,441 USD, and 9,841 USD respectively at N380 per USD. Their study equally revealed that the determinants of productivity were sex, age, and marital status [12]. Also, analysis of artisanal fishing operations in Degema Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria reported that the majority (86.7%) of the farmers are male with a household size within 6 -10 people (53.0%).…”

Determinants of Food Security and Technical Efficiency among Agricultural Households in Nigeria

“…In terms of technical efficiency, most of the existing literature studies focused on estimating efficiency with emphasis on a single crop and their predictors either in a single equation or using a two-step approach (see Tijani 2006;Ajayi and Olutumise 2018;Oluwatayo and Adedeji 2019). With the focus on a single crop, Tijani (2006) and Ajayi and Olutumise (2018) estimated the mean technical efficiency of rice and cassava farmers to be 86.6 percent and 83 percent, respectively in Nigeria.…”

Performance of Fish Farms in Vietnam–Does Financial Access Help Improve Their Cost Efficiency?

“…Since the DEA frontier is based on the observed DMUs, it does not require any a priori specification of the production function and is therefore flexible . The ability to handle multiple outputs also makes DEA more popular in the field of agriculture (Färe et al 1985;Mao and Koo 1997;Thiam et al 2001), fisheries (Oliveira et al 2010;Shen et al 2013;Zibaei 2012) and, increasingly, aquaculture (Iliyasu et al 2014;Oluwatayo and Adedeji 2019;Pham et al 2018;Sharma et al 1999;Sharma and Leung 2003). Sharma et al (1999) measured the DEA revenue efficiency of 115 fish farms in eight provinces in China for 1985.…”

“…Its counterpart, stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), is based on regression and thus can only deal with a single dependent variable or output (Bukenya et al 2013;Kim et al 2011). Most DEA studies on aquaculture farms analyze how efficiently the sampled farms transform their production inputs such as labor, feed or fingerlings into outputs such as fish yields or sales (i.e., technical efficiency) (Arita and Leung 2014;Kaliba and Engle 2006;Oluwatayo and Adedeji 2019;Pham et al 2018;Thiam et al 2001). In this sense, to improve their efficiency, aquaculture farmers can minimize the use of their inputs (given the same outputs), maximize the production of their outputs (given the same inputs), or try to do both.…”