Abstract:
In the last two decades, the smallholder crop production in Ethiopia has enjoyed relative
growth in acreage, output, and number of growers, but productivity has remained low. In
Ethiopia, there are different empirical studies on efficiency analysis in different agroecologies,
the results shows that there is significant difference in technical efficiency and
inefficiency variables. What is scarce in the literature is that their conclusion is not consistent
with one another. Therefore, this study estimates the technical efficiency of sorghum farmers
and identifies their determinants in Melka Bello District, East Hararghe, Ethiopia.
The primary data collected from 138 randomly sampled sorghum-producing households durig
2019/2020 production year were employed for analysis. Cobb-Douglas frontier model with
inefficiency variables were estimated by maximum likelihood method. The result indicated that
mean technical efficiency of the farmers in the production of sorghum is 76%. This reveals
that there exists a possibility to increase the sorghum output by 24% by existing resources and
technological level. The discrepancy ratio gamma (γ) was to be 89.5%, which measures the
relative deviations of the sorghum output from the frontier due to individual
inefficiency. This implies that about 89.5% of variations in sorghum production farmer were
attributed to technical inefficiency. The maximum likelihood parameter estimates showed that
the amount of seed, land, oxen day, Npsb fertilizer, and labour forces were positively and
significantly influenced sorghum output. The inefficiency parameters shows that extension
contact, fertility status of soil, age, education, soil and water conservation negatively
affect technical inefficiency. The implication is that improvement in these variables reduces
technical inefficiency. However, TLU positively and significantly affected the level technical
inefficiency. Hence, local government should be provide a necessary supports to farmers
such as formal as well as informal education, extension visits, soil managements and
conservation.
