FARO-44 RICE PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY OF FADAMA III ADDITIONAL FINANCE II BENEFICIARIES IN TARABA STATE,

The study analysed the faro-44 rice production efficiency of fadama III additional finance II beneficiaries in Taraba State, Nigeria. A Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 250 respondents. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study revealed that The result of maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic frontier production Function of dry season faro-44 rice farmers reveal that farm size (P<0.01), fertilizer (P<0.05), quantity of seed (kg) (P<0.01), herbicide (liter) (P<0.05), were positive and significant increasing output of the farmers. Similarly, the age (P<0.01) level of education (P<0.01), farming experience (P<0.05) and household size (P<0.05 were the socio-economic characteristics influencing the increase in technical efficiency of the farmers. Furthermore, the technical efficiency of the farmers is glaringly below 1, an indication that the farmers are operating below their production efficiency frontier. A reasonable proportion (41.20%) of the respondents were within 0.60-0.69 technical efficiency index range with highest value of 0.91 for the most efficient farmers and minimum of 0.50 for the least efficient or worst farmer. Consequently, farmers obtained mean technical efficiency of 0.76 which will improve their technical efficiency by 24%. The result further revealed that, the farmers attained an estimated mean allocative efficiency of 0.88. It was concluded that most of the farmers were unable to obtain technical efficiency level above 76% and farmers were 88% allocative efficient. The study recommended that farmers level of technical efficiency can be increased by 27% by building farmers’ capacity through training, workshops and seminars on postharvest loss management, processing techniques, farm record keeping in order to avoid wastages and sustain efficiency.