Empirical Analysis Of Productivity And Resource-Use-Efficiency In Ghana’s Cocoa Industry: Evidence From Bibiani-Anhiawso-Bekwai District.

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AUGUST, 2010
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Abstract
This study analyses the production and resource use efficiency in Ghana’s cocoa bean industry. The study area (Bibiani-Anhiawso-Bekwai district) was particularly chosen for this study because of its prime place in cocoa production. The productivity and technical efficiency involved in cocoa production was estimated using the stochastic frontier production function analysis and the direct or primal approach was used in estimating the resource allocation efficiency. Cocoa farming was mostly on small scale level as most of the farmers (70%) had less than 5 hectares producing about 20 bags of cocoa per cocoa season. Moreover, about 90 percent spray their farms with insecticides and fungicides whilst just about 41 percent apply fertilizer on their farm. The stochastic analysis showed that farm size, mean age of cocoa trees, labour, frequency of weeding and pruning, intensity of insecticides and frequency of insecticides application exerts significant effects on cocoa production whilst intensity of fertilizer application, frequency and intensity of fungicide application had no influence on cocoa production. The results further revealed that, cocoa farm operation had positive increasing return to scale (RTS=1.26) indicating that cocoa production was in the irrational stage of production (Stage III). The efficiency level ranged between 0.03 and 0.93 with a mean technical efficiency of 0.49. The major contributing factors to efficiency were farmer’s years of experience, farmers benefiting from CODAPEC programme and family size. However, cocoa farmers were not fully economically efficient in the allocation of their resources. The study observed that there was an opportunity for increase in farmers’ efficiency and concluded that policies that would directly affect these identified variables should be pursued vigorously.
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A Thesis Submitted To The School Of Graduate Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science And Technology, Kumasi, In Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirements For The Award Of Master Of Philosophy Degree In Agricultural Economics.
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