Economic efficiency and constraints of maize production under shifting cultivation farming system in low land of Gudeya Bila district, Oromia national regional state, Ethiopia: Stochastic frontier approach

Abstract Traditionally farming system of rural area in Ethiopia is based on producing maize without oxen ploughing which is characterized with clearing land by their own land and cultivating it without oxen ploughing. Thus for many years the farmers of Ethiopia are unable to meet their food security. This situation is continued currently in the study area in which the production system of maize is based on producing advanced methods of production that need improvements of efficiency of farmers .Therefore these studies analyze economic efficiency and constraints of maize production under shifting in the low land farming of Gudeya Bila district. The study was conducted using cross-sectional data collected during the 2020/2021 production year from 154 randomly selected sample households. To estimate the level of technical, allocative and economic stochastic production frontier model was employed and Tobit model was used to identify factors affecting technical, allocative and economic efficiency of sample households.The mean technical, allocative and economic efficiency were 78.78%, 69.99% and 56.66% respectively. The Tobit model results shows that education levels, family size, farm size, construction of terrace, frequency of extension contact, uses of credit, participation in off/non-farm activities and shifting cultivation had a significant positive effect on technical efficiency. Livestock holding and participation in off/nonfarm activities have positive effects and distance to plot were found to have negative effect on allocative efficiency while family size, soil conservation practice, credit, extension service, off/non-farm activities were found to have positive effect and distance to plot is negative influence on economic efficiency. The main conclusion steaming from this analysis was there is the possibility to enhance the efficiency of maize producers in the study area. Thus policies and strategies of the government should be directed towards the contraction of terrace, shifting from shifting cultivation to oxen farming, producing by fragmented of land rather than focusing only on single plot.