Relationships between agricultural input suppliers and output sellers are
an important
component of agricultural production in rural Nigeria. Inputs are often difficult to access at
critical periods of the crop cycle and
few storage options requires rapid marketing of output after
harvest.
This paper uses a 20 year panel (198
8
-
2008) with detailed information on both
ag
ricultural production and agricultural
networks to examine the effect of different types of
network rel
ationships (
input suppliers
and output sellers
) on the expansi
on of the household’s
profit
frontier
and techn
ical efficiency.
Households that have more agricultural links produce
more and have higher input utilization rates across the two survey rounds.
I find that increased
agricultural
l
inks has
no direct effect on fa
rm profits, but additional agricultural li
nks lower the
tec
hnical inefficiency of the production process
thereby increasing the effectiveness of input
mixes in production which raises profits indirectly
.