IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaae23/364838.html

Enhancing smallholder sweet potato production and reducing susceptibility to inefficiencies in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Matli, Mankaba M.W
  • Senyolo, Mmapatla P.
  • Nhundu, Kenneth
  • Belete, Abenet

Abstract

Smallholder farmers often face challenges in adopting improved technologies to increase their crop outputs. To address this issue, it has been acknowledged that increasing resource use efficiency can be a significant factor in enhancing farmers' resilience to inefficiencies and increasing outputs. Resilience to inefficiencies is crucial for increasing output, as quantity is a vital prerequisite when taking produce to market. It has also been argued that investing in the economic research of minor crops, such as sweet potatoes, can offer lucrative opportunities for poverty alleviation and employment creation in rural and poor communities. This paper analyses the resilience of smallholder sweet potato farmers to inefficiencies using the Data Envelopment Analysis and drivers (using the Tobit Regression Model) of resilience to inefficiencies in STATA. The study was warranted to see areas that need improvement to achieve a sweet potato production system that is resilient to inefficiencies. As part of the assessment, Gauteng, North West and Limpopo Provinces were purposively selected and a total of 119 sweet potato farmers were selected using a snowball sampling technique. Face – to – face interviews were used to collect the quantitative and qualitative data from the respondents. Results indicated that smallholder sweet potato farmers in South Africa are generally not resilient to inefficiencies and this is influenced by the quantity of their outputs, land sizes, access to credit, employment statuses and use of chemicals.

Suggested Citation

  • Matli, Mankaba M.W & Senyolo, Mmapatla P. & Nhundu, Kenneth & Belete, Abenet, 2023. "Enhancing smallholder sweet potato production and reducing susceptibility to inefficiencies in South Africa," 2023 Seventh AAAE/60th AEASA Conference, September 18-21, 2023, Durban, South Africa 364838, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaae23:364838
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.364838
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/364838/files/339.%20Sweet%20potatoes%20in%20South%20Arrica.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.364838?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nouman Afzal & Stavros Afionis & Lindsay C. Stringer & Nicola Favretto & Marco Sakai & Paola Sakai, 2021. "Benefits and Trade-Offs of Smallholder Sweet Potato Cultivation as a Pathway toward Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Anbes Tenaye, 2020. "Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Agriculture in Developing Countries: The Case of Ethiopia," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-27, April.
    3. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    4. Abdulai, Awudu & Huffman, Wallace, 2000. "Structural Adjustment and Economic Efficiency of Rice Farmers in Northern Ghana," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(3), pages 503-520, April.
    5. Poulton, Colin & Dorward, Andrew & Kydd, Jonathan, 2010. "The Future of Small Farms: New Directions for Services, Institutions, and Intermediation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 1413-1428, October.
    6. Munir Ahmad & Boris E. Bravo-Ureta, 1995. "An Econometric Decomposition of Dairy Output Growth," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(4), pages 914-921.
    7. Alwang, Jeffrey & Gotor, Elisabetta & Thiele, Graham & Hareau, Guy & Jaleta, Moti & Chamberlin, Jordan, 2019. "Pathways from research on improved staple crop germplasm to poverty reduction for smallholder farmers," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 16-27.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhong, Shen & Li, Junwei & Qu, Yi, 2022. "Green total factor productivity of dairy cow in China: Key facts from scale and regional sector," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    2. Madau, Fabio A., 2012. "Technical and scale efficiency in the Italian Citrus Farming: A comparison between Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) Models," MPRA Paper 41403, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Nguyen To-The & Tuan Nguyen-Anh, 2021. "Impact of government intervention to maize efficiency at farmer’s level across time: a robust evidence in Northern Vietnam," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 2038-2061, February.
    4. Watkins, K. Bradley & Hristovska, Tatjana & Mazzanti, Ralph & Wilson, Charles E., Jr., 2013. "Measuring Technical, Allocative, and Economic Efficiency of Rice Production in Arkansas using Data Envelopment Analysis," 2013 Annual Meeting, February 2-5, 2013, Orlando, Florida 142962, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    5. Hayatullah Ahmadzai, 2022. "Hope for Change: Is Diversifying Production Portfolios an Ideal Strategy to Boost Farming Efficiency in Afghanistan?," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 22(1), pages 7-31, January.
    6. Krzysztof Piotr Pawłowski & Wawrzyniec Czubak & Jagoda Zmyślona, 2021. "Regional Diversity of Technical Efficiency in Agriculture as a Results of an Overinvestment: A Case Study from Poland," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-20, June.
    7. Khezrimotlagh, Dariush & Kaffash, Sepideh & Zhu, Joe, 2022. "U.S. airline mergers’ performance and productivity change," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    8. Christian Growitsch & Tooraj Jamasb & Christine Müller & Matthias Wissner, 2016. "Social Cost Efficient Service Quality: Integrating Customer Valuation in Incentive Regulation—Evidence from the Case of Norway," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Joe Zhu (ed.), Data Envelopment Analysis, chapter 0, pages 71-91, Springer.
    9. Franz R. Hahn, 2007. "Determinants of Bank Efficiency in Europe. Assessing Bank Performance Across Markets," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 31499.
    10. Alperovych, Yan & Hübner, Georges & Lobet, Fabrice, 2015. "How does governmental versus private venture capital backing affect a firm's efficiency? Evidence from Belgium," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 508-525.
    11. Wang, Zhao-Hua & Zeng, Hua-Lin & Wei, Yi-Ming & Zhang, Yi-Xiang, 2012. "Regional total factor energy efficiency: An empirical analysis of industrial sector in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 115-123.
    12. repec:lan:wpaper:1115 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Azarnoosh Kafi & Behrouz Daneshian & Mohsen Rostamy-Malkhalifeh, 2021. "Forecasting the confidence interval of efficiency in fuzzy DEA," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 31(1), pages 41-59.
    14. Ruiqing Yuan & Xiangyang Xu & Yanli Wang & Jiayi Lu & Ying Long, 2024. "Evaluating Carbon-Emission Efficiency in China’s Construction Industry: An SBM-Model Analysis of Interprovincial Building Heating," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(6), pages 1-16, March.
    15. Costa, Marcelo Azevedo & Lopes, Ana Lúcia Miranda & de Pinho Matos, Giordano Bruno Braz, 2015. "Statistical evaluation of Data Envelopment Analysis versus COLS Cobb–Douglas benchmarking models for the 2011 Brazilian tariff revision," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 47-60.
    16. Kristiaan Kerstens & Ignace Van de Woestyne, 2018. "Enumeration algorithms for FDH directional distance functions under different returns to scale assumptions," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 271(2), pages 1067-1078, December.
    17. Bo Li & Muhammad Mohiuddin & Qian Liu, 2019. "Determinants and Differences of Township Hospital Efficiency among Chinese Provinces," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-16, May.
    18. Ahmad, Usman, 2011. "Financial Reforms and Banking Efficiency: Case of Pakistan," MPRA Paper 34220, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Nijkamp, P. & Stough, R. & Sahin, M., 2009. "Impact of social and human capital on business performance of migrant entrepreneurs - a comparative dutch-us study," Serie Research Memoranda 0017, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    20. Bowlin, W. F., 1995. "A characterization of the financial condition of the United States' aerospace-defense industrial base," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 539-555, October.
    21. Bharti Seth & Punita Saxena & Shalini Arora, 2024. "Operational performance of Indian passenger airlines using hierarchical categorical DEA approach," International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, Springer;The Society for Reliability, Engineering Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM),India, and Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, vol. 15(4), pages 1415-1423, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaae23:364838. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaaeaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.