Production efficiency among growers of New Rice for Africa in the savanna zone of Nigeria.

The technical, allocative and economic efÞ ciencies of farmers who grow the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) were examined empirically in this study. The probabilistic frontier production function was used to predict the farm level technical efÞ ciency which serves as basis for estimating the economic efÞ ciency. Results showed that rice output is inelastic with respect to herbicide (0.04), land (0.25), fertilizer (0.31), seed (0.33), labour (0.46) and statistically signiÞ cant (P < 0.01). Rice farms in the study area exhibits increasing positive return to scale (1.3), indicating that farmers were not efÞ cient in allocating their resources. The average technical, allocative and economic efÞ ciency indices of 0.65 (±0.059), 0.59 (±0.111) and 0.39 (±0.094) respectively, indicate considerable room for increase productivity of rice farmers through improvement in their production efÞ ciencies. EfÞ ciency indices were signiÞ cantly (P < 0.05) affected by age of farmer, farming experience, extension contact and credit use. Improvement of those factors that signiÞ cantly affect efÞ ciency indices is recommended.