Analysis of Technical Efficiency and Determinants of Cereal Production on Family Farms in the Dogon Plateau in Mali

The area of the Dogon plateau located in central-eastern Mali is an arid agricultural region with difficult morpho-pedological and climatic conditions where peasant populations derive their income and especially their food from agriculture. The objective of this study was to determine the level of technical efficiency of family farms in this area and subsequently to identify the factors explaining their inefficiency. Data were collected from a sample of 400 farms through a quantitative survey. The stochastic frontier production method was used to determine their efficiency scores. Truncated regression was used to identify farm inefficiencies. The results of the study show that in the Dogon Plateau area family farms have an average efficiency score of 72.75%, which means an overall loss of 27.25% of production factors. The maximum efficiency score is 92.60% against a minimum of 0.21%. In addition, it appears that less than 20% of farms in the area have a below-average technical efficiency score. The analysis of the determinants of the technical inefficiency of farms shows that the association of agriculture with livestock, the possession of agricultural land with a land title and the cultivation of onion/shallot positively and significantly influence the level of technical efficiency of family farms in the Dogon Plateau area. Contrary to our expectations, the decrease in cultivated areas due to the residual insecurity of our study area has no significant effect on the technical efficiency of the farms.