Estimating the technical and allocative efficiency of among sun flower farmers in Lira district
Abstract
Out of the 108 farmers included in the study, 97.22% were males, 59.74% had primary level education with only 7.79% wit tertiary level education. Majority (89.81%) had access to extension services with majority be visited about 5-15 times in the past three months with only 2.97% being visited more than 25 times in the past three months. Majority of the farmers acquired money from SACCO (76.1%) and only 1/21 (4.76%) of the farmers acquired money from the bank. 99.07% of the farmers were planting hybrid sunflower. The average output of sunflower was 2289 Kg/Ha providing farmers with an average income of 1,920,000 Uganda shillings. The average technical efficiency of farmers was 0.651 (65.1%). This implies that on average farmers are capable in obtaining 66.7% percent of potential productivity from a given mix of inputs. Coefficient of labour of inefficiency model is 0.081. The positive value of coefficient implies a positive relationship between labour and inefficiency of sunflower farming. The farmers did not achieve the allocative efficiency since its value was far less than one. Therefore the marginal cost was greater than the marginal benefit. Therefore the factors that are significantly affecting technical efficiency are; labour, cost of seeds and cost of fertilizers.
The allocative efficiency of sun flower is 0.531(53.1%) meaning farmers are at least able to get 53% returns from investing in sun flower production