IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea16/235938.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Efficient Is Maize Production among Smallholder Farmers in Zimbabwe?

Author

Listed:
  • Mugabe, Douglas
  • Etienne, Xiaoli L.

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of resource use for maize production among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe. We collect a total of 176 questionnaires from Mazowe South district, consisting of both A1 (less than 10 hectares of land) and A2 (greater than 10 hectares of land) farms. Findings based on parametric Stochastic Frontier models show that smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe are not efficiently utilizing their available agricultural resources when producing maize. The average technical efficiencies are only 36.75% and 38.6% for A1 and A2 farms, respectively. About 60% of A1 and all A2 farmers have technical efficiency scores between 0.3 and 0.5. In the non-parametric analysis, however, we find a much higher technical efficiency for both types of farms, over 60% and 75% for A1 and A2 farms, respectively. Still, these numbers are lower than those found in other countries. Among other factors examined, attaining tertiary education and access to extension services by the head of the household can significantly improve production efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Mugabe, Douglas & Etienne, Xiaoli L., 2016. "How Efficient Is Maize Production among Smallholder Farmers in Zimbabwe?," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235938, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea16:235938
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235938
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/235938/files/How%20Efficient%20Is%20Maize%20Production%20among%20Smallholder%20Farmers%20in%20Zimbabwe.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.235938?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. Orefi Abu & Johann Kirsten, 2009. "Profit efficiency of small- and medium-scale maize milling enterprises in South Africa," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 353-368.
    2. Mushunje, Abbyssinia & Belete, Abenet & Fraser, Gavin C.G., 2003. "Technical Efficiency Of Resettlement Farmers Of Zimbabwe," 2003 Annual Conference, October 2-3, 2003, Pretoria, South Africa 19084, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA).
    3. Obi, Ajuruchukwu & Chisango, Future Fortune T., 2011. "Performance of Smallholder Agriculture Under Limited Mechanization and the Fast Track Land Reform Program in Zimbabwe," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Bangwayo-Skeete, Prosper F. & Bezabih, Mintewab & Zikhali, Precious, 2010. "Are Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Farms more Technically Efficient than Communal Farms?," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 49(4), pages 1-21.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Federico Belotti & Giancarlo Ferrara, 2019. "Imposing monotonicity in stochastic frontier models: an iterative nonlinear least squares procedure," CEIS Research Paper 462, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 29 Jan 2021.

    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. Musemwa, L. & Mushunje, Abbyssinia & Muchenje, V. & Aghdasi, F. & Zhou, L., 2013. "Factors affecting efficiency of field crop production among resettled farmers in Zimbabwe," 2013 Fourth International Conference, September 22-25, 2013, Hammamet, Tunisia 161443, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    2. Houssou, Nazaire & Diao, Xinshen & Cossar, Frances & Kolavalli, Shashidhara & Jimah, Kipo & Aboagye, Patrick, 2013. "Agricultural mechanization in Ghana: Is specialization in agricultural mechanization a viable business model?," IFPRI discussion papers 1255, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    3. Rahaman, Md Shajedur & Haque, Sadika & Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf & Rahman, Mohammad Chhiddikur & Reza, Md Salim & Islam, Mohammad Ariful & Siddique, Md Abu Bakr, 2021. "A Cost Efficiency Analysis of Boro Rice Production in Dinajpur District of Bangladesh," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 6(1), pages 67-77.
    4. Houssou, Nazaire & Chapoto, Anthony, 2015. "Adoption of Farm Mechanization, Cropland Expansion, and Intensification in Ghana," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211744, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Precious, Tirivanhu, 2017. "Facilitating transformative learning for community development: Experiences from Zimbabwe," African Journal of Rural Development (AFJRD), AFrican Journal of Rural Development (AFJRD), vol. 1(3), March.
    6. Yonas T. Bahta & Henry Jordaan & Gunda Sabastain, 2020. "Agricultural Management Practices and Factors Affecting Technical Efficiency in Zimbabwe Maize Farming," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    7. Qiu, Tongwei & Shi, Xinjie & He, Qinying & Luo, Biliang, 2021. "The paradox of developing agricultural mechanization services in China: Supporting or kicking out smallholder farmers?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    8. Gregory Chingala & Cletos Mapiye & Emiliano Raffrenato & Louw Hoffman & Kennedy Dzama, 2017. "Determinants of smallholder farmers’ perceptions of impact of climate change on beef production in Malawi," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 142(1), pages 129-141, May.
    9. L. Mdoda & A. Obi, 2024. "Market Participation and Volume Sold: Empirical Evidence From Irrigated Crop Farmers in the Eastern Cape," Journal of Agricultural Science, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(17), pages 1-66, April.
    10. Obi, Ajuruchukwu & Chisango, Future Fortune T., 2011. "Performance of Smallholder Agriculture Under Limited Mechanization and the Fast Track Land Reform Program in Zimbabwe," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, November.
    11. Temesgen T. Deressa, 2011. "Effects of climatic conditions and agro-ecological settings on the productive efficiencies of small-holder farmers in Ethopia," Working Papers 223, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    12. Houssou, Nazaire & Chapoto, Antony, 2014. "The changing landscape of agriculture in Ghana: Drivers of farm mechanization and its impacts on cropland expansion and intensification:," IFPRI discussion papers 1392, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crop Production/Industries; Production Economics; Productivity Analysis;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:aaea16:235938. 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/aaeaaea.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.