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Does farm size matter? Investigating scale efficiency of peasant rice farmers in northern Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Tetteh Anang

    (University of Helsinki)

  • Stefan Bäckman

    (University of Helsinki)

  • Antonios Rezitis

    (University of Helsinki)

Abstract

The study assessed the technical and scale efficiency of small-scale rice producers in northern Ghana as well as the effect of farm size on efficiency. Using survey data from 300 farm households, the study employed data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure efficiency and a bootstrapped truncated regression in the second stage to assess the determinants of efficiency. The results indicated that respondents had overall technical efficiency of 46.6 percent, pure technical efficiency of 65.1 percent and scale efficiency of 69.5 percent. Farm size had a significantly positive effect on scale efficiency with majority of the farms operating at increasing returns to scale. The determinants of efficiency included farm size, gender of the household head, access to credit and irrigation, number of extension visits, the degree of specialization in rice production and location of the farm. Most of the inefficiencies are either technical or scale in nature hence there is justification to increase the scale of production of smaller farms in order to take advantage of unexplored economies of scale. The technically inefficient farmers also need to reduce waste in resource utilization by improving their efficiency of resource use. The authors prescribe other policy measures needed to improve rice production in northern Ghana.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Tetteh Anang & Stefan Bäckman & Antonios Rezitis, 2016. "Does farm size matter? Investigating scale efficiency of peasant rice farmers in northern Ghana," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(4), pages 2275-2290.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-16-00520
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Dokyi Emmanuel & Anang Benjamin Tetteh & Owusu Victor, 2021. "Impacts of Improved Seed Maize Technology Adoption on Productivity and Technical Efficiency in Northern Ghana," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 118-132, January.
    3. DJOKOTO, Justice Gameli & OWUSU, Victor & AWUNYO-VITOR, Dadson, 2020. "Is Organic Agriculture More Scale Efficient Than Conventional Agriculture? The Case Of Cocoa Cultivation In Ghana," Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE), Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra, vol. 23(2), October.
    4. Kamila Radlińska, 2023. "Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Technical Efficiency—The Example of European Union Agriculture," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-18, September.
    5. Mosbah, Ezzeddine & Zaibet, Lokman & Dharmapala, P. Sunil, 2020. "A new methodology to measure efficiencies of inputs (outputs) of decision making units in Data Envelopment Analysis with application to agriculture," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Data envelopment analysis; farm size; northern Ghana; peasant farming; scale efficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q0 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General
    • R3 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location

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