ASSESSMENT OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY AMONG MALARIA AND NON-MALARIA AFFECTED RICE PRODUCING HOUSEHOLDS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The study was to examine the effect of malaria on the technical efficiency of rice farmers in Nigeria through some specific objectives which are to: describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents; determine the socio-economic characteristics that influence malaria incidence; determine the factors that influence the choice of malaria care provider; determine the economic burden of malaria disease on rice farmers in the study area; assess the effect of malaria incidence on rice producers’ technical efficiency; and determine the differentials in technical efficiency between malarious and non-malarious households. The study was carried out in Ebonyi, Ekiti States (Forest) and Niger State (Savanna). The multistage sampling procedure was adopted in data collection. A total of 570 rice farmers selected randomly participated in the study. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, Tobit and the Multinomial Logit Model (MNLM). The Cost of Illness Approach and the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) were also used. The mean household size was eight persons and six persons per household in the Svanna and Forest zones respectively. The pooled data average age was 49.5 years with 44.4years and 52.2years in the Savanna and the Forest zones respectively. Respondents in the Forest zone had more years of education than their counterparts in the Savanna zone with mean years of education of 2.9 years in the Savanna and 6.8 years in the Forest zone. The mean income was ₦100,914.32, but 89.0% of the farmers earned below the mean annual income. The respondents were far from health care facilities with mean clinic distance of 5.08km and 3.36km for the Savanna and Forest zones respectively. The mean treatment cost of ₦532.67k and ₦548.82k were recorded in the Forest and the Savanna zones respectively for infested households. Savanna zones farmers exhibited the higher level of perception of the health implication of malaria compared to their counterparts in the Forest zone. Some socio-economic variables’ influence on malaria incidence showed that level of education (p<0.01), distance to Clinic (p<0.05), treatment cost (p<0.01), farm distance (p<0.01), malaria perception (p > 0.01) and marital status (p<0.01) significantly influenced malaria incidence among the rice farmers in the Forest zone, while variables such as household size (p<0.01), distance to clinic (p<0.01), treatment cost (p<0.05), farm distance (p<0.05) and marital status (p<0.05) had significant effect on malaria incidence in the Savanna zone. The analysis of the choice of Malaria care provider by farmers indicates that covariates such as annual income, clinic distance, treatment cost, malaria perception and treatment time significantly influenced the odds of preferring public hospital to self-medication in the Forest zones while Household size, education, treatment cost, treatment time and number of household members down with malaria significantly influenced the choice in the Savanna zone. The economic burden of malaria incidents revealed that about 7.85% and 11.01% of the annual income of rice farmers with malaria in the Forest and Savanna zones respectively was spent on malaria treatment. The farmers’ stochastic frontier analysis showed that (pooled data), farm size, and seed quantity significantly increased rice output. Family labour appeared to be overused by the rice farmers in the entire study area. The level of education, annual income, treatment cost, days lost to malaria treatment, and number down with malaria significantly contributed to the technical inefficiency of all the rice farmers. The mean level of technical efficiency (76%) was higher in the Forest zone than in the Savanna zone (69%). The technical efficiency score distribution revealed that the non-malarious household subgroup (84%) was more efficient than the malarious households’ subgroup (54%). Treatment cost was the main variable that reduced the efficiency of the malarious rice farmers’ households. The study made it distinctly and convincingly clear that rice farmers from non-malarious households were more technically efficient than the rice farmers from malarious households in the study area.