Analysis of Rice Productivity among Beneficiaries of Anchor Borrowers Programme in Adamawa State, Nigeria: Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Rice production in Nigeria has always been dominated by small scale farmers using traditional crude methods which are inefficient, resulting in low yield.  Various measures have been taken by the government to improve rice production with the view of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production for consumption as well as export. Despite these measures, rice has not been sufficiently produced to meet the demand of the growing population in Adamawa State. So many problems might have contributed to this, which could be due to lack of adaptable rice varieties and low level of productivity of resources used by the rice farmers among others. Recently, the federal government introduced the anchor borrowers programme (ABP) with the goal of helping rice farmers to achieve desired output using improved production resources. This paper examined rice productivity and factors affecting rice farmers’ productivity among beneficiaries of anchor borrowers programme in Adamawa State, Nigeria. A multistage random sampling procedure was used in selecting the respondents. A structured questionnaire is administered to 139 farmers spread across 3 Local Government Areas to obtain information on farmer’s socio-economic variables, inputs used and output obtained in rice production. The objectives were analyzed using descriptive statistics, data envelopment analysis and OLS regression. The DEA result for level of productivity revealed that the average technical efficiency of 0.71, a minimum of 0.02 and a maximum of 1.0, indicating that the inefficient farmers could decrease their levels of input usage by 29% to produce the same levels of outputs to be at the same level with the frontier farmers. The results showed that the double log functional form gave the best line of fit. R2 value was about 86% and statistically significant at 1% level. Seed (0.882), family labour (0.712), hired labour (0.109), herbicide (0.548), fertilizer (0.200) and land (0.211) were positively and significantly related to productivity at different probability levels. Based on the findings, the study concluded that the mean technical efficiency (productivity) score was 0.71 indicating a high level of productivity. The study also found that all the production factors used by rice farmers among anchor borrower’s beneficiaries had a positive influence on the productivity levels of the rice farmers. Hence, productivity among rice farmers depends largely on their production factors.