ANALYSIS OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF SORGHUM PRODUCTION IN HIDHABU ABOTE WOREDA, NORTH SHOA ZONE, OROMIA REGION, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of the Ethiopian economy because it constitutes almost half of the GDP and more than 85 % of the population still depends on it for their livelihood. As a result, the government has given attention to the development of agriculture. The key challenge here is how to increase the productivity of smallholder farmers so that they would increasingly benefit from the small plot of land, and surplus labor could increasingly move to industrial sector. Thus, this study was aimed to measure the level of technical efficiency and identify the factors that influence the efficiency levels of sorghum in Hidabu Abote district during the production year of 2021. A three stage sampling technique was employed to select 95 sorghum growing sample households. Primary and secondary data was collected through interview schedule from the sampled households and reviewing secondary sources, respectively descriptive statistics, and stochastic production functions were employed to analyze the collected data. The Stochastic Production Frontier (SPF) result revealed that seed, labor, oxen power and fertilizer were found to be significantly influencing sorghum production at 5%, 5%, 1%, and 5% significance level, respectively. The coefficient of the Cobb-Douglas production function interpreted as elasticity and summing the individual elasticity, yields a scale elasticity of 1.014% this indicated that farmers’ scale of production belongs to increasing returns to scale. The result of the study further showed that household size, extension service, education, livestock holding, slope and off farm activity contributed significantly and positively to TE. There should be timely supply of fertilizer and quality improved seed to improve farmer’s efficiency in production of sorghum