Crop diversification and technical efficiency in food crop production

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the trends in crop diversification (CD) while examining its impact on the technical efficiency of peasant farmers in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs the Herfindahl and Ogive indices to compute the diversification indices and the stochastic frontier production model (SFPM) to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) level of the farms using unbalanced panel data covering three farming seasons (2006/2007 to 2008/2009). Findings – The results of both the Herfindahl and Ogive indices showed that cropping pattern increased significantly with the intensification of crop diversification in the study across the three seasons. The result of the SFPM shows evidence of decreasing returns‐to‐scale and technical progress in the food crop production in the region. Education, extension, and CD are identified as efficiency increasing policy variables while an average TE level of about 81 percent was obtained from the analysis. Originality/value – To the best of the author's knowledge, this the very first study that employs panel data to analyze technical efficiency of farms in Nigeria.