Profit Efficiency and Poverty Status of Farmers in Selected Rice Growing Communities in Cross River State, Nigeria

Aim: This study analyzed the profit efficiency and poverty status of rice farmers in selected rice growing communities in Cross River State, Nigeria.

Methodology: The multistage random sampling was used to select rice farming households in the study area. Primary data were collected by means of questionnaire. The mean per capita household expenditure (MPCHHE) and the P-alpha measures of poverty were used for the measurement of poverty while the Stochastic Profit Frontier (SPF) was used to obtain the efficiency estimates and determinants among the rice farming households. The logit regression model was also used to show the effect of some factors on poverty status of the rice farmers.

Results and Discussion: The results showed that, out of the 64.32% of the farmers who were generally poor, 40.85% and 23.47% of them were assessed to extremely and moderately poor respectively. The incidence, depth and severity of poverty were 65.32%, 27.84% and 16.38% respectively. The study further showed that profit efficiency ranged between 0.34 and 1.0 with mean efficiency of 0.73, suggesting that there are opportunities for rice farmers in the State to increase their farm income with a view of reducing their poverty levels. The result indicate that educational level, farm size and efficiency negatively influenced poverty while sex, age, educational level, farm size, household size and farming experience were the main determinants of profit efficiency. Inadequate credit access, capital and supply of farm inputs; high cost of labour, poor marketing outlets, and near absence of modern processing facilities were the rice production constraints.

Conclusion and Recommendations: The study has shown that rice farmers in the State were majorly poor and relatively efficient with opportunities for improvement. To improve the profit efficiency of rice farmers and reduce their household poverty status would require addressing some vital policy indicators that influenced them. Such policies should encourage experienced rice farmers to remain in production, the raising of the level of education of the poor through adult education, and provision of single digit interest loans and input subsidies to enable the farmers increase their farm sizes.