How efficient is maize production among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe? A comparison of semiparametric and parametric frontier efficiency analyses

The controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe that redistributes commercially-owned farmland to smallholder households has caused concerns about the efficiency of agricultural production in the country. In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of resource use among smallholder farm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied economics 2019-06, Vol.51 (26), p.2855-2871
Main Authors: Etienne, Xiaoli L., Ferrara, Giancarlo, Mugabe, Douglas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural extension
Agricultural land
Agricultural production
Agriculture
contextual variables
Corn
Crops
Data envelopment analysis
Economic analysis
Economic theory
Efficiency
Farmers
Farms
Fast Track Land Reform Programme
Households
Land reform
maize production
Parametric statistics
semi-parametric model
Stochastic frontier
Zimbabwe
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Summary:The controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe that redistributes commercially-owned farmland to smallholder households has caused concerns about the efficiency of agricultural production in the country. In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of resource use among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe when producing maize, the staple crop in the country. Using both a semiparametric model and a fully parametric stochastic frontier model, we find significant production shortfalls for smallholder maize production. While labor, capital, and land all significantly affect the total output, the estimated mean efficiency score for farms with less than 10 hectares of land (A1) appears to be under 0.75, and for the entire sample (A1 and A2) it ranges between 0.595 and 0.772. There clearly exists a great potential for maize farmers to improve the technical efficiency and increase the total output. Gender and age of the household head, access to extension services, and activities of other crops significantly affect the technical efficiency of smallholder maize production in Zimbabwe. We also find that all farms operate under increasing returns to scale and that the technical efficiency score tends to increase with the level of output.
ISSN:0003-6846
1466-4283
DOI:10.1080/00036846.2018.1558363