Abstract:

Information on efficiency in sunflower production is generally lacking and this in turn has severely limited the ability to devise promising policy initiatives in sunflower industry. This study was therefore motivated by the desire to ensure that policy makers and planners make informed policy on how to increase sunflower productivity with the existing resources and available technologies. The general objective was to assess the possibilities for productivity gains that can be made from the current resources by sunflower farmers in Lango in view of guiding policy makers. The specific objectives were to; estimate farm-level technical efficiency of sunflower in Lango Sub-region. And identify factors which influence technical efficiency among sunflower farmers. Using cross-sectional data from 196 households from four districts of Lango Sub-region, I ! J data was collected to measure farm level technical efficiency in sunflower production. The study employed stochastic frontier approach where the results of C-D functional form showed that coefficient of inputs had positive value of 1.1136 indicating increasing returns to scale. The observed technical efficiency ranged from 16.76% to 96.20% with a mean of 81.2%, indicating a wide variation among the different farmers. Further inquiry indicates that education of household head, contract farming and access to credit had significant influence on technical inefficiency. The study therefore calls for attention of the policy-makers and the planners to give top priority to strengthening of rural and agricultural supporting institutions in order to enhance agricultural productivity. Such policies inclusion promoting operation of big private companies which can contract producers. Perhaps the government could also from commodity authority for sunflower like the case of coffee and coton development authorities or cooperatives. Improve accessibility to credit facilities by farmers will go a long way in addressing their resource use constraints thus improving efficiency problems. Encouraging farmers to adopt and utilize conventional inputs such as subsidies could help them to improve efficiency. Such policies could go hand in hand with strengthening government extension link in sunflower currently is lacking. The study also recommends the need for further research to look into allocative efficiency. Additional study can be conducted by employing stochastic cost function model to explore input-cost minimization or data envelop analysis. Additional study can be done that look at oxen as one of the main input variables.