Abstract

Agriculture has been and still is Malawi’s main sector of the economy. It contributes about 40% of the country’s GDP and about 83% and 79% of exports and employment respectively. Realizing this, the government has identified tobacco, suga cane and tea as the major crops which should be developed as one of the growth and development strategies’ key sectors. Sugar has overtaken tea in quantity and value of exports earnings. In Malawi sugar is manufactured from sugarcane which is grown at both the estate and smallholder level. The smallholders are outgrowers who grow sugarcane to sell to Illovo and for Malawi there is a scheme at Dwangwa and Kasinthula in Chikwawa. These farmers are an important component of the sugar production chain because their efficiency determines how much sugar is produced in a particular period. However there have not been studies to investigate the efficiency of sugarcane farmers who are suppliers of raw materials for sugar production. This study examines productivity of peasant sugarcane farmers of rural Malawi. Specifically the study employs stochastic frontier models to estimate technical efficiency scores for phase 1 and 2 of the scheme. Cobb-Douglas production function for sugar farmers at Kasinthula Cane Growers Association scheme are estimated using maximum log likelihood methods in STATA 9. The results suggest that on average farmers at this scheme are technically efficient with factors such as education, land size and experience having more importance in determining efficiency of these farmers. The study recommends that phase 3 of the project should be funded since with an increase in land the study predicts an increase in yields and total production of raw cane

More details

School	: School of Law, Economics and Government
Issued Date	: 2008

Download full document