Analysis of farm household technical efficiency in Northern Ghana using bootstrap DEA

Crop production is the main source of livelihood for households in Northern Ghana. The government is committed to improving crop production and knowledge about the technical efficiency of crop farms is essential in guiding policy decisions. This paper examined the technical efficiency of 189 crop farms in Northern Ghana using data envelopment analysis (DEA) with bootstrapping. We found that bias-corrected average technical efficiency of the sample farms is 77.26%. The estimated scale efficiency is 94.21%. In a second stage regression, we found that hired labour, geographical location of farms, gender and age of head of household significantly affect technical efficiency. Policy implications of the results are discussed