Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Tomato Production in Semi-Urban Farms in Cameroon: A Stochastic Frontier Production Approach

Abstract

Agriculture is the mainstay of Cameroon's economy as it serves the purposes of food, livelihood and employment. Nevertheless, the country's agriculture is plagued by low productivity and inefficiency in production. One of the main reasons for low productivity is the inability of farmers to fully exploit available technologies and production techniques. An important research question that comes to mind is, what are the major factors that hinder the technical efficiency of smallholder farmers? This study thus aimed to determine the level of technical efficiency in the production of tomato in smallholder farms, relying on primary data collected using a structured survey instrument administered to 80 tomato farmers in the Buea municipality of Cameroon. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and a stochastic frontier analysis method in the Cobb-Douglas production function. The STATA.14 software was used to obtain both stochastic frontier estimates and the determinants of technical efficiency. The results indicate that farmers are not fully technically efficient with a mean technical efficiency score of 0.68 with one farmer operating on the frontier. The study also revealed that most of the farmers irrespective of the size of the holdings have shown technical inefficiency problems. The older farmers were observed with the best measures of technical efficiency. Education, age and the adoption and practice of agronomic techniques had a positive and significant influence on technical efficiency while the nearest distance to the extension agent had a rather negative influence on technical efficiency. The input-output relationship showed that the area of tomato cultivation and the quantity of improved seed used were positive and significantly related to output at the 5% level of probability. As a result, it is recommended that farmers should increase their farm size, use of improved seeds and the adoption and practice of novel techniques in production. More emphasis should be placed on extension agents as they have a significant role to play in terms of improving and augmenting farmers' education and information base through on farm demonstrations and result oriented workshops as all this will ensure increased production and productivity thereby increasing technical efficiency and achieving food self-sufficiency.

Factors Affecting Efficiency of Vegetable Production in Nigeria: A Review

“…Contrarily, an increase in farmer's age was found to increase technical inefficiency in tomato production in Benue State [11]. In other countries in Africa, older farmers are more technically efficient than their younger counterparts in Cameroon and Swaziland [39,55]. They attributed this to their respective years of experience in the production of the commodity.…”

“…The higher the level of education, the more enlightened a farmer becomes in adopting new innovation with its multiplier effect on increased output. According to [39] in Cameroon, on tomato production, higher level of education of farmers results in increasing technical efficiency of farmers. This is justifiable as new techniques, and innovations are introduced daily especially with the presence of research institutions.…”

“…It is worthy of note that efficient utilization of resources leads to improvement in production [38]. Improvement in technical efficiency of farmers will lead to better yield, food security, and better standards of living [39].…”

An Analysis on the Effect of Farmer’s Health on Production Performance in the Kumba Municipality of Cameroon

“…Cameroon like most developing nations is still greatly dependent on agriculture for purposes of income, livelihood, food and employment [3]. Despite years of policy reforms and various adjustment programs, food production is still lagging behind with the country losing its potentials as one of the bread baskets of Africa.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, there has been no study on the impacts of poor health on agricultural production in Cameroon. Most existing studies [1,3] only focused on identifying major production shifters and the role of other household characteristics. This study is novel and adds to knowledge while providing robust evidence for policy debates on the importance of farmer's health in production.…”