Relative Efficiency of Fadama Farmers in Southwest Nigeria: An Application of Profit Function Techniques

The study examines efficiency of small -scale fadama farmers in Southwest Nigeria. Attempts were also made at examining the relative efficiency of the irrigated system with respect to gender. Data used for the analysis were obtained from 212 farmers (145 men and 67 women) practising fadama farming through a multistage sampling procedure. Results from the study show that over half of the farmers (51%) have formal education, 32% have mom than five years fadama farming experience, 46% purchase land for farming while 9% have farm plots exceeding 0.8 hectares. The normalised profit function, shows that the co- efficient for seeds (as) agrochemicals (as) water (aw) fixed (/3K) and farmland (A,,,) were significant (Ps 0.01). The study establishes that both male and female farmers have equal allocative efficiency but differ in technical and price efficiency. The study concludes that women are however more disadvantaged than men in terms of ownership and acquisition inputs used for fadama farming