Improving production efficiencies, food security, and livelihood nexus: Study of smallholder arable crop producers in Botswana

Abstract

Low agricultural productivity aggravates the food insecurity situation in Botswana, resulting in the government rolling out subsidy programs to increase food production efficiency. How efficient a farmer is, determines his/her level of productivity and income and, subsequently, how food secure the family becomes. Thus, improvement in the production efficiency of arable crops is crucial for smallholder farmers‟ livelihood and food security. This study examines the effects of the timeliness of farmers receiving production inputs subsidy on the Botswana smallholder arable crop farmers‟ production efficiencies and, subsequently, evaluates how efficiencies impact farm households‟ livelihood and food security. A structured interview schedule was used to collect data from four hundred and seventy arable crop farmers who were selected using a multi-stage random sampling technique. For analysis, the study used the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), a Livelihood Assessment Index (LAI) and the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). Furthermore, Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) models were estimated to establish the empirical relationships between the farmers‟ livelihood on the one hand and production efficiencies and food security status on the other hand. The results revealed very low production efficiencies, high food security and livelihood status. The timeliness of receiving input subsidies by farmers negatively affected their efficiency highly. Therefore, policy should focus on improving the subsidy timeliness to increase farmers‟ efficiency, livelihoods and food security.