Owing to the seemingly recalcitrant world food crisis, the difficulties encountered
by farmers in developing countries in adopting improved technologies due to resource
poverty, it has become pertinent to exploit the opportunities offered by the so called minor
crops. This has necessitated some investigations into the farm level efficiency in sweet
potato production. Moreover, efficiency has become a very significant factor in increasing
productivity. Therefore, this paper examined the determinants of production efficiency
among smallholder sweet potato farmers in Imo State of Nigeria. Farm-specific allocative,
technical and economic efficiencies and their determinants were estimated within the
framework of stochastic frontier analysis of primary data from a random sample of 120
farmers. The parameters of the stochastic frontier cost and production functions were
estimated using the maximum likelihood method from which allocative efficiency
estimates were deduced. Results show that individual farm level allocative efficiency was
about 77%. The study found household size, access to credit, membership of cooperatives
and farming experience to be positively and significantly related to allocative efficiency.
The coefficients for farm size and gender were negatively signed indicating that female
farmers were more allocatively efficient than their male counterparts. It was therefore
recommended that policies aimed at resource re-distribution be made. Such policies should
ensure that more land and other inputs especially fertilizer are made available to women.
Such policies for the farmers to increase yield by efficient allocation of resources and
harness the lucrative gains that derive from the production and trade of sweet potato should
be targeted more at the more experienced farmers with large household sizes, small farm
size and are members of cooperative associations.