Since 1980, Ethiopia has been struggling to feed its growing population, despite the fact that agriculture is the mainstay of its economy. A number of government initiatives aimed at raising food production and ensuring national food security have made little progress in achieving their objectives. This paper identifies some of the implications of the new agricultural intensification programme, focusing on the technical efficiency and productivity of maize growers in the Harari region of Ethiopia for food insecurity and agricultural development policies. The paper concludes that there is scope to improve the technical efficiency of maize farmers and enhance their socioeconomic situation in the Harari region.

Majority of Ghanaian farmers produce multiple commodities in integrated farming systems. These systems contribute significantly to Ghana's domestic food production and food security. However, most of these farmers receive very low returns from their farming activities making it difficult to sustain or improve household livelihoods. One reason for these low returns is the low productivity and low uptake of technologies in these farming systems. This leaves most farmers in great financial difficulty, particularly during the dry season where most crops are not supported by the climatic conditions. The production of crops, such as yam, cassava, maize, cowpea, groundnut and soybean, as well as livestock, such as small ruminants in a diversified system, are very significant to the livelihoods of the farmers by ensuring a stable income and employment of productive resources throughout the year. Previous studies have focused on the analysis of the patterns of adoption and performance of farmers in a single crop or livestock production system, but attempts to evaluate the performance in integrated crop-livestock systems are limited. This study fills this gap by using farm-level data collected from farmers in the Atebubu-Amantin and Ejura-Sekyedumase districts to evaluate the nature of adoption of improved technologies in key crops and livestock and integrated crop-livestock farming systems. The nature and determinants of diversification and the extent and drivers of productivity in integrated crop-livestock systems in Ghana are also examined.

Agricultural diversification has been identified as one of the mechanisms for managing household food security and poverty in developing economies, because it can spread the risk among multiple production enterprises and provide a range of food items for the households. By examining the integrated farming systems of 608 smallholders in Ghana, this paper presents empirical evidence to support the development of effective strategies that enhance diversified farming systems. The estimated mean diversification indices were 0.45, 0.32 and 0.59 for crop, livestock and crop-livestock diversification systems, respectively. Using the Cragg two-step regression model, this paper shows that the decision to diversify and the extent of diversification are distinct decisions affected by different sets of factors. Likewise, the effect of these factors also varied across the three categories of diversification examined. Careful consideration needs to be given to the selection of factors and the methods for examining the diversification process to avoid confounding recommendations. The findings underscore the importance of households' access to tillage equipment, fertilizers, credit and market information in encouraging farmers to diversify.

Dual-purpose cowpea (DPC) and dual-purpose groundnut (DPG) varieties provide good yields, improved soil fertility through nitrogen fixation, and, at the same time, provide large amounts of good quality fodder to be used as feed or manure in crop-livestock integrated farming systems in Ghana. Hence, these varieties play a significant role in improving the productivity and efficiency of crop-livestock systems in Ghana. This paper estimates the population potential adoption rates of the DPC and DPG varieties and their determinants among integrated crop-livestock farmers in Ghana when there is full access to complete and accurate information and access to the seed by farmers. Because these varieties have been newly introduced, not all farmers are aware of them nor have access to the seed. Using cross-sectional data from 608 farmers, this paper applies the average-treatment-effect method to estimate the population potential adoption rates of the DPC and DPG varieties and coefficients of their determinants among integrated crop-livestock farmers. The result shows that, potential population adoption rates of DPC and DPG could reach 78% and 85%, if all farmers have knowledge about the varieties, and up to 83% and 94%, respectively, if all the farmers have knowledge and access to seed. These results indicate that there are adoption gaps of 42% and 47% due to incomplete knowledge of DPC and DPG and 47% and 55% due to incomplete access to seed of the respective varieties. The adoption gaps suggest that there is still potential for increasing the adoption rates of these dual purpose legumes among crop-livestock farmers in Ghana if exposure and access to seed of the varieties are universal among the farmers. Also farmers with access to extension, research institutes and credit are more likely to be exposed, have access to the seed and adopt the varieties.

In 1994/95 Ethiopia launched a new agricultural intensification program based on the experience gained from the programs of the past and the success of the SG 2000 agricultural project in achieving higher yields in the subsistence sector. Stochastic frontier production functions were estimated for a sample of maize farmers within and outside the New Extension Program in order to study their technical inefficiencies and identify some of the factors contributing to variations in the productivity of maize farmers in the Harari Region of Ethiopia. It is found that there were technical change and changes in technical inefficiencies of maize farmers between 1994/95 and 1997/98. The average technical efficiency of maize farmers was 73 per cent and factors such as agricultural extension, formal education, and off-farm incomes were important factors affecting the technical inefficiencies of maize farmers within the program. We concluded that policies enhancing the managerial and decision-making capacity of maize growers contributed towards increasing their technical efficiencies and the objective of achieving increased maize production.

This paper uses cross-sectional data collected from 375 smallholder yam farmers in Ghana in 2010 to examine whether the adoption of yam minisett technology had an effect on the technical efficiency of production of the yam farmers. We correct for endogeneity in adoption and employ stochastic frontier analysis to investigate the effect of adoption of the technology on the technical efficiency of production. Our analysis suggests average technical efficiencies of 85.4% and 89.2% in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions respectively. In addition, the effect of adoption of the technology on the technical efficiency of smallholder farmers was positive and significant in the Ashanti region, but negative in the Brong Ahafo region. Our results provide information to improve the uptake of production technologies and their effect on smallholder yam farmers in Ghana.

Both Jasmine and non-Jasmine rice yields in Thailand are substantially lower than their respective average world rice yields. Sources of yield variations in both kinds of rice, i.e., production inputs, technical inefficiency and other factors, are investigated in this study. Factors affecting technical inefficiency of production are analyzed simultaneously with the estimation of the production frontiers using the method of maximum likelihood. Cobb-Douglas stochastic yield frontiers are used to investigate policy implications. The crucial factors influencing Jasmine rice yields are technical inefficiency, chemical fertilizer, labor, transplanting, irrigation, severe drought and neck blast, whereas for non-Jasmine rice, the same factors are significant, except for labor, neck blast, and transplanting, but other chemicals had a significantly positive effect. Factors negatively affecting technical inefficiency for non-Jasmine rice are the ratio of male labor to total labor and experience reflected by the age of the farmers, while labor influences in the positive direction. For Jasmine rice, only the male-labor ratio significantly influences technical inefficiency.