Gender and productivity differentials among rice farmers in Niger State, Nigeria.

Abstract

The study compared the differences in the productivity of male and female rice farmers in Niger State, Nigeria. Data used for the study were obtained from primary source using a multi-stage sampling technique with structured questionnaires administered to 150 randomly selected male and female rice farmers from the study area. Descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviations and percentages were used to summarize the variables used in the analysis while input– oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to empirically determine the total technical, pure technical and scale efficiency with respect to gender in the study area. The DEA results revealed that the male rice farmers were more scale efficient than their female counterparts with mean scale efficiency scores of 0.71 and 0.63 for male and female rice farms respectively. The results also showed that about 77 % and 83% of male and female rice farms operated at increasing returns to scale level respectively. This implies that the two farm groups could achieve higher efficiency level by increasing the production scale. The comparison test for significant differences in mean technical efficiency among the two farm categories confirmed that the mean total and pure technical efficiency with scale efficiency are statistically and significantly higher on male rice farms than on female rice farms. The implication of these findings is that male rice farmers are fairly efficient in utilizing their resources than their female counterparts and any expansion in the use of resources would bring more than proportionate increase in their outputs. The study therefore recommended that research efforts directed towards the generation of new technology, especially for rice farmers, should be encouraged in the study area.