Soil Fertility Management And Maize Productivity In Malawi: Curvature Correct Efficiency Modeling And Simulation

Hardwick Tchale and Johannes Sauer

No 52077, 2007 Second International Conference, August 20-22, 2007, Accra, Ghana from African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE)

Abstract: We assess the level and determinants of relative technical efficiency of maize-based smallholder farmers using a translog stochastic frontier (TL) model and a symmetric generalized Barnett production function (SGB), both of which are tested for economic regularity conditions. In addition, we conduct a bootstrapping procedure in order to infer about the probability distributions and significance of the relative efficiency values for farmers using different soil fertility management options. The results indicate that higher levels of relative technical efficiency obtain when farmers use integrated soil fertility options compared to the use of chemical fertilizer only. The consistency of the results across the two models increase the robustness of the findings. The paper concludes that productivity growth under the maize-based farming systems is considerably higher when farmers use integrated soil fertility management options. Thus there is need for policy and institutional interventions that enhance farmers’ adoption and scaling-up of integrated soil fertility management.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Farm Management; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; International Relations/Trade; Labor and Human Capital; Productivity Analysis; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13
Date: 2008-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/52077/files/Tchale.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaae07:52077

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.52077

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2007 Second International Conference, August 20-22, 2007, Accra, Ghana from African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().