Promoting improved agricultural technologies to increase smallholder farm production efficiency: Ghanaian study of cassava farmers

Abstract

Our study provides empirical answer that verifies increase in productivity, if any, through promotion of improved agricultural technologies among smallholder food crop farmers in Africa. We specifically examined Root and Tuber Improvement and Marketing Programme (RTIMP) technology effect on improving the production efficiency of cassava farmers in Ghana. we stratified RTIMP cassava farmers into above average adopters and below average adopters based on their adoption intensity scores and further examined differences in their efficiency levels which we estimated by employing the stochastic frontier production model (SFA). In order to empirically establish if RTIMP technology has actually had effect in improving productivity of the cassava farmers, we estimated an adjusted regression model (average treatment effect and average treatment effect on the treated models). Our results show that the potential outcome mean technical efficiency of about 69% achieved by the above average RTIMP technology adopters is significantly higher than that of the below average technology adopters which was found to be about 64%. Our Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATET) estimates confirm that there has been significant increase in the technical efficiency of cassava farmers attributable to the adoption of the RTIMP cassava technology