Households’ Dietary Diversity, Farm Income and Technical Efficiency Correlates: Empirical Evidence from Small-scale Farming Households in Nigeria
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Date
2013
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Abstract
This study examined the relationship among farming households’ technical efficiency, dietary diversity and
farm income in Kwara state, Nigeria. Respondents were randomly sampled from among the National Special
Programe for food security (NSPFS) beneficiaries and non benficiaies across the 3 geo-political zones
in the study area. Stochastic frontier model was used to estimate the respondents’ technical efficiency
while the dietary diversity score and farm income were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics.
The Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to assess the level of relationship among
the indicators. The study revealed a significant linear relationship among households’ dietary diversity, farm
income and technical efficiency. While technical efficiency was inversely related to farm income (r = -0.278,
p = 0.01) and dietary diversity (r = -0.206, p = 0.05) on one hand, dietary diversity was positively related
to farm income (r = 0.307, p = 0.05). The study has two important implications; first, increasing farm income
may be of relevance if the goal of enhancing food security is pursued and benefits of technical efficiency
growth may not necessarily translate into enhanced farm income and dietary diversity. This study therefore
suggests the provision of infrastructures that would enable the farmers to access the benefits of improved
technical efficiency
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Keywords
Correlation, technical efficiency, farm income, dietary diversity, Nigeria