A Dissertation In Agricultural and Applied Economics
The objective of this study was to examine the level of technical efficiency of smallholder
pearl millet producers and identify its determinants in the semi-arid farming system of
Dodoma, Tanzania. A Translog stochastic production function model was used in the
analysis. To specify technical inefficiency effects of socioeconomic variables, Maximum
Likelihood Estimation (MLE) technique using cross sectional data collected from 300
randomly selected sample farmers in 2016 was applied. The MLE results revealed that
land size under pearl millet cultivation and squared labour man days are the major factors
influencing positively changes in the pearl millet output. The effect of land area on the
output is positive and the coefficient is found to be significant, implying the economies of
scale. The test result indicates that there is inefficiency in the production of pearl millet in
the study area. The relative deviation from the frontier due to inefficiency is 67%. The
average estimated technical efficiency for smallholder maize producers ranges from 0.18
to 0.91 with a mean technical efficiency of 0.78 (78%). The analysis also reveals that
educational level of the farmer, experience of household head, and household size are the
major socioeconomic factors significantly influenced farmers’ technical efficiency and
pearl millet output at 10%, 1% and 5% respectively. The implication of the study is that
technical efficiency in pearl millet production in the study area could be increased by 22
percent through better use of available resources, given the current state of technology.