European Academic Research ISSN 2286-4822
ISSN-L 2286-4822
Impact Factor: 3.4546 (UIF)
DRJI Value : 5.9 (B+)
Article Details :
Article Name :
Analysis of Gender Differentials in Technical Efficiency among Smallholder Maize Farmers in Rwanda
Author Name :
Dr. RUVUNA ERIC, Dr. RUTURWA DANIEL, Dr. MURWANASHYAKA THEOPHILE
Publisher :
Bridge Center
Article URL :
Abstract :
One of the ways to achieve food security and poverty reduction among smallholder farmers in developing countries is to ensure efficient use of the scare agricultural resources. Objective of this study was to estimate maize output for male and for female farmers. To achieve this objective data on the socio-economic and institutional factors were collected among 80 male managed farms and 80 female managed farms based on the simple random sampling method. To analyze the data, descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted. The findings of the maximum likelihood estimates confirmed that farm size, seed, organic fertilizer, inorganic fertilizer and labour affected maize production for the male farmers while farm size, seed, organic fertilizer and labour affected maize production for female farmers therefore considered as important factors in determining maize output. Higher return to scale was observed in male managed farms because male’s RTS was greater than 1 while that of female was less than 1 implying that male farmers were operating in the increasing return to scale while female farmers were in the decreasing return to scale. Analysis of technical efficiency results reported that higher mean technical efficiency (86%) was found in male managed farms compared to that of female managed farms (61%). Based on the findings of the study, the author recommends that there is a need of initiating programs that lead to the empowerment of female farmers and focusing on the use of scarce resources. This will lead to increase maize production and thereby enable female farmers to operate in a zone of increasing return to scale and contribute to increase the levels of female farmers’ technical efficiency in Musaza sector.
Keywords :
Males, Females, Smallholder, Technical efficiency, Maize.

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