An Assessment of Irrigated Tomato Farming on Resource productivity of Farmers in Vandeikya Local Government Area of Benue State: Application of Technical Efficiency Model
The study assesses Irrigated Tomato Farming on Resource Productivity of Farmers in Vandeikya, Local Government Area of Benue state. To achieve this, primary and secondary data were used. The analytical tools include descriptive statistics and stochastic frontier production function applied on a cross-sectional data of 120 irrigated tomato farmers during 2013 farming season. The results from the simple percentage show that good number of respondents were within the productive age bracket of 18 – 55 years which account for 90% of the respondents. While the results from Maximum Likelihood Estimation indicate positive sign which implies that efficient use of inputs would result in increased output of Tomato. Also the results obtained from the technical efficiency model, shows that irrigated tomato farming was not fully utilized although farmers were generally relatively efficient, they still have room to increase their efficiency of farming activities to 41% to close the efficiency gap from the optimum (100%). The study recommended that available irrigation facilities should be improved upon through public private partnership. Moreso, extension agents need to be deployed to guide farmers on irrigation technique to enhance efficiency in tomato production.
