Technical Efficiency Of Garlic Producers Under Small Scale Irrigation Among Farm Household Heads: The Case Of Ilfeta District West Shoa Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Garlic production is one of the strategies transforming smallholder farmer’s subsistence farming to a business enterprise in Ethiopia. Despite its importance to Ethiopia's economy, garlic is characterized by low productivity and production due to technological and socioeconomic issues. Therefore, this study was aimed to determine technical efficiency of garlic producers under small scale irrigation among farm household heads: the case of Ilfeta District, West Shoa Zone of Oromia, Ethiopia. For this study, both primary and secondary data collected were used. A three stage sampling technique was employed to select 173 garlic producers among farm household heads. A Cobb-Douglass production function of stochastic frontier model was used to estimate the level of technical efficiency and used to identify factors affecting technical inefficiency of the sampled farm household heads. The muximam likelihood parameter estimates showed that garlic output was positively and significantly influenced byseed, NPS, labor, oxen power, land and agrochemicals. This would mean that there is a room to increase garlic output from the existing level if garlic producers able to use these input variables in an efficient manner. The result further revealed that there were significant differences in technical efficiency among garlic producers in the study area. The gamma parameters was 0.69, this implies that about 69% of the total variation in garlic output from the production frontier was due to technical inefficiency of garlic producers among farm household heads. The estimated mean values of technical efficiency were 70%. Based on this result there was room for increasing garlic production by 30% through efficient use of existing resources and technology. A stochastic frontier model found that education level, extension contact, frequency plough, total livestock owned and total cultivated land significantly and negatively affect technical inefficiency, while distance of cultivated garlic land from water source and off/non income significantly and positively influence technical inefficiency. Thus, the result of this study suggested that there is a need to improve efficiency of garlic producers among farm household heads and a need to develop the number of strategies to increase garlic production in study area. Accordingly, policy measures derived from the results include increase supply of input on time at the right place, develop rural infrastructure, expanding education, increase frequency of extension contact and raring livestock should get more attention.