Non-Parametric Estimation of the Production Efficiency of Poultry Egg farming in Ogun State, Nigeria

This study estimated the efficiency of poultry egg farming in Ogun state, Nigeria. Primary data were collected with the use of structured questionnaire from 120 farmers drawn by a multi-stage random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, Tobit regression model and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) were used to analyze the data. The Data Envelopment Analysis (A Non-Parametric measure) gave the mean technical, scale, allocative and economic efficiency to be 88.9%, 96.6%, 13.95%, and 12.41% respectively, implying that inefficiency exists in the poultry (egg) enterprise. Farmers can still increase output by 11.1% and also increase revenue by 86.05% by ensuring efficient use of resources and access to price information without the need to change existing technology. The Tobit analysis showed that married farmers (P<0.05) and those that have higher flock size (p<0.05) were more efficient, while older farmers (p<0.01) were less efficient. This study concludes that membership of cooperative society, marital status of farmers; credit sufficiency, flock size, and age of farmers are factors affecting the production efficiency of poultry (egg) farmers.