SIERRA LEONE maq 4ª.indd - agrilife - Europa

= 0.72) for non-food requirements. In order to
calculate the equivalent poverty line for the
year of our survey (2009), the inflation over
this time period was taken into account. The
inflation rate based on consumer price index
was taken from the calculations of the World
Bank38 . According to this, for the year 2009
the Extreme (Food) Poverty and Full Poverty
Lines can be expressed in monetary terms as Le
648,079 (i.e. 160) and Le 1324,670 (i.e. 326)
per year – Le 1776 (0.44) and Le 3425 (0.89)
per day –, per adult equivalent, respectively.
A household whose expenditure cannot cover
the basic food needs is considered to be
“food poor”; and when the expenditure does
not cover both the basic food and non-food
requirements is considered to be “poor”.
In order to calculate how many of the
surveyed households are falling below these lines
the total household income should be determined.
This includes income from farm production and
also income from off-farm activities. In this study
detailed information is available on the income
coming from the households’ farm production,
however only qualitative data has been collected
for the income from off-farm sources. As stated,
with this information we can quantify to what
extent the income from agricultural production
covers the basic needs of the smallholders and
then determine the level of self-subsistence.
Those households who fall below these poverty
lines considered as poor, unless they do cover
their basic needs from other income sources.
The poorer the household (from a farming
perspective) is the more important will be other
source of income, not necessarily coming from
the farm.
5.2.2 Input factor productivity of smallholders
Productivity is the ratio of some (or all)
valued outputs that an organisation produces
to some (or all) inputs used in the production
38 World Bank database: http://data.worldbank.org/
indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG
process (Jacobs, et al, 2006). In the present case
study, smallholders’ productivity is determined in
terms of their most important production factors:
labour and land.
To illustrate the situation of farm households
in the survey, productivity is understood as a
measure of output from a production process,
per unit of input (i.e. an apparent or partial
measurement). Consequently, labour productivity
is measured as a ratio of output (in monetary
or physical terms) per working unit (full time
equivalent per year), and land productivity as a
ratio of output per acre.
Generally speaking, technical efficiency
refers to the ability to minimise input use in
the production of a given output vector, or the
ability to obtain maximum output from a given
input vector (Kumbhakar and Knox Lovell, 2000).
Besides, the input factor productivity ratios
described above, a rough measure of technical
efficiency per type of crop is also introduced by
comparing output per worker and surface area
available per worker as illustrated in Figure 20.
Mazoyer (2001) also employs this
comparative procedure to unveil the differences
in terms of varying technological constraints
in agriculture. Since in the Sierra Leone survey
technology access is rather homogenous
throughout the sample, the comparisons are
drawn crop type. This provides information
on how farm households producing the same
crop perform between one another; as well
as information at regional level to compare
overall performance between regions. Thus, a
best management practice within regions may
be observed, and the characteristics of the best
performing farms may also be identified.
Rural poverty reduction and food security: The case of smallholders in Sierra Leone
85