Demand-Driven Technologies for Sustainable Maize ... - IITA

394host of socio-economic and institutional factors. Ineffi ciency mainlyarises due to managerial incompetence and hence the variationin effi ciency could be examined in the context of managementcharacteristics such as training, background, and motivation. Differentproduction practices may also contribute to observed variation ineffi ciency among farmers. However, a number of farm and farmerattributes have to be used as proxy variables because of lack ofadequate direct measures on some of the variables, which are simplyunobservable. Socio-economic and institutional factors that coulddirectly or indirectly affect the quality of the management of the farmare believed to impact on effi ciency levels. Accordingly, variables thatwere hypothesized to affect effi ciency levels in this study are farmsize, age, credit, education, extension services, timely availability ofinputs, plot ownership, and participation in the product market. Forthe investigation of socio-economic and institutional factors affectingeffi ciency levels, the following model was estimated:( )ln E /1− E = δ + δ ( FRMSZ ) + δ ( AGE ) + δ ( PREDUC ) + δ ( CRDT )i i 0 1 i 2 i 3 i 4i( )+ δ ( TNUR ) + δ INPTIM + δ ( EXTV ) + δ ( MRKT )5 i 6 i 7 i 8i(12)where E iis an effi ciency measure representing technical or allocativeeffi ciency; FRMSZ denotes the total land area cultivated; AGE denotesthe age of the household head; PREDUC is a dummy variablerepresenting primary education (equals 1 if the household headattained primary education and 0 otherwise); CRDT denotes accessto credit (equals 1 if the farmer had access to input credit during theseason for improved maize production, and 0 otherwise); TENUR isa dummy for land tenure in terms of plot ownership (equals 1 if theplot has been allocated by the government, and equals 0 if it has beensharecropped, rented in, or borrowed); EXTV denotes the number ofvisits to a farmer by an extension agent during the cropping season;and INPTIM denotes timely availability of modern inputs (equals 1 ifthe farmer acquired the necessary inputs in time and 0 otherwise); andMRKT denotes access to market (equals 1 if the farmer has sold maizeand 0 otherwise). The variables used in the analysis are presented inTable 1.Empirical resultsParameter estimatesThe maximum-likelihood (ML) estimates of the parameters of thestochastic frontier production function were obtained using thecomputer program LIMDEP 7.0 (Greene, 1995). These results are