Technical efficiency of catfish production in Oyo State, Nigeria. A case of freshwater culture systems using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach

Nigeria is the highest fish consumer and offers the largest market for fish and fisheries products in Africa, fish as food is the main source of animal protein to this teemed population. Although domestic fish production is on increase despite this, the country still experiences short fall due to rapid growing human population. This study therefore estimates the technical efficiency and factors responsible for inefficiency of catfish production in freshwater culture systems using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The result shows that estimated inefficiency coefficients for age and household size (p<0.05); experience, farm size and extension service (p<0.1) were statistically significant. This agrees with the priori expectation that technical efficiency should increase with increase in these parameters. Furthermore, all inputs used by catfish farmers in production processes indicated slacks but at different degree. Fish feed, being the most important input in fish production, constitute more than half of production cost thus, farmers in the study area could operate on the production frontier by reducing their feed input levels by 7.33% and 8.25%, for concrete tanks and earthen ponds respectively. However, Research Institute and University should come up with a well-defined, nutritionally complete and affordable feed for catfish production and disseminate same to farmers. Also, subsidy programme should be introduced to reduce production costs, increase farmers’ income and provide enough animal protein to the teeming population at affordable price