Technical Efficiency in Producing Cashew Nuts in Benin’s Savanna Zone, West Africa

In Benin, cashew nut represents the second major cash crop after the cotton. It is, therefore, an important source of income in rural areas. Accordingly, we investigated in this paper, the technical efficiency of producers in the management of their cashew orchards. Data were collected on 180 randomly selected producers, in the Central and Northern parts of Benin. We adopted a Cobb-Douglas functional form to estimate a production function using a stochastic production frontier approach. Results show that the cashew nut production in Central and Northern Benin was not optimal. The average technical efficiency score of cashew nut producers was to 0.63 (minimum 0.10, maximum 0.88) with a modal class of [0.70–0.80]. According to these results, the cashew nuts production system in the current settings is very extensive and could be improved through intensive use of labor and capital