ABSTRACT

 It has been observed that women are involved in agricultural production generally and sweet potato production in particular, yet their contributions to food production have not been recognized by both the male folk and government established agencies. This study examined gender and relative efficiency in sweet potato production in Imo State of Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed in selecting one hundred and twenty (sixty-four women and fifty-six men) sweet potato farmers in the State. A cost-route method of data collection was used to obtain information on the socioeconomic characteristics of the farmers, problems confronting them in sweet potato production, farmers' output, inputs and their prices. Descriptive statistics such as means, frequencies and percentages were used in analyzing the data on the socioeconomic variables and the problems confronting the farmers. The Cobb-Douglas and Transcendental logarithmic functional forms of the stochastic frontier were estimated using the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) technique to obtain the technical, allocative and economic efficiencies of the farmers. The t-statistic was used to compare the mean output of the men sweet potato farmers and their women counterparts. It was also used in testing hypothesis of no significant difference in technical, economic and allocative efficiencies across gender. The results indicate that the mean ages of the men and women sweet potato farmers were 45 years and 44 years, and with mean household size of 7 and 6 persons respectively. The mean years of formal education was 7 years for men and 8 years for women, indicating that the sweet potato farmers had formal education. The result further revealed that the men I. farmers were more experienced than their women counterparts and had larger farm size than the women as shown by the mean of 04I hectare against 0.36 hectare of the women farmers. The major constraints facing the sweet potato farmers were identified to be poor storage facilities, lack of fertilizers, scarcity of sweet potato vines, high cost of labour and pests and diseases. It was again revealed from the study that farming experience, level of education, household size, credit, age and farm size had positive influence on efficiency. The result of the efficiency indices indicated that the mean technical efficiency for the men and women sweet potato farmers were 85% and 92% respectively. It further indicated that the mean economic efficiency was 71% for the men and 82% for the women sweet potato farmers while the mean allocative efficiency was 83% for the men and 86% for the women farmers. The result of the tstatistic showed that the mean output of the men sweet potato farmers was significantly higher than their women counterparts. It also revealed that the women sweet potato farmers were significantly more technically efficient than their men counterparts; while there was no significant difference in the allocative efficiency of the farmers across gender, as revealed by the t-statistic. Based on these results, appropriate policies and programmes that could enhance efficiency among the sweet potato farmers like encouraging them to acquire formal education to at least secondary schoQi level and strengthening of Adult and nomadic education were recommended as education affected efficiency positively.