Analysis of Resource Use Efficiency of Low Land Rice Production in Katcha Local Government Area of Niger State

Abstract

This research was carried out to study the resource use efficiency of low land rice production in Katcha Local Government Area of Niger State. The specific objectives were to determine the resource use efficiency, describe socio-economic characteristic of low land rice farmers and problems faced by low land rice farmers in study area. Two districts were purposively selected out of which ten villages were randomly selected.And random sampling proportional to size of each village was used to select 200 rice farmers using 1991 census figure. Descriptive statistics was used to examine socio-economic characteristic and production experience of rice farmers. Production function analysis was used to determined resource use efficiencyin low land rice production of the farmers. The result of descriptive statistic indicated that 86.5% of low land rice farmers were between the ages of 20 -50 years. Majority of the farmers were literate with long experience of rice cultivation. The M V P/M F C ratio of resources like farm size, seed material, Agro chemical and fertilizer were underutilized because their ratio were greater than 1 while family and hired labor ratio of MVP/MFC shows over utilization because their ratio were less than 0 which means all resources were inefficiently utilized. The best fit analysis which is lead equation was semi log with F- value of 94.831, and R2 of 0.747. Farm size seed materials and fertilizer were significant at 1% level of probability. The elasticity of production was 0.724 indicating decreasing return to scale. It was recommended that the use of farm size, seed rate, agro chemical and fertilizer be increased while the use of family and hired labor should be reduced.