Technical efficiency of family poultry husbandry in Artibonite and South Departments of Haiti

V P Nchinda* and O Thieme**

* IRAD (Institute of Agricultural Research for Development) Bambui, Box 80, Bamenda Cameroon
petenstebe@yahoo.com
** FAO, Animal Production and Health Division, Rome

Abstract

The technical efficiency of farmers who rear indigenous chicken in two departments of Haiti was examined empirically using the Stochastic Production Frontier Function.

Results showed that the mean technical efficiency index of an average performing family poultry farmer is 0.554 (or 55.4%) with a maximum of 0.855 (85.5%) and a minimum of 0.092 (9.2%).The mean family poultry income could be increased by 44.6% at the present resource use level. Meanwhile, sex of the respondents, household size and the number of birds vaccinated were sources of inefficiency at 1% level of significance respectively. Furthermore, the number of eggs sold the previous year and participation in the family poultry support project had a significant influence on the inefficiency parameters of family poultry at 5% and 1% levels of significance respectively.

Key words: backyard poultry, resource-use

Introduction

Rustic chickens have important cultural values (Laroche & Awono 2008) and keeping them remains a major livestock rearing activity for 95% of rural households in Haiti (MARNDR, 2007). It is a profitable venture (Gawande et al 2007; Dei et al 2009) and a means for livelihood improvement and poverty alleviation (Dolberg 2007; Fasina et al 2007; Sharma 2007). In fact, an FAO and Haitian government family poultry husbandry support program contributed positively to the economic and food security situation of participating poor households in Haiti (Nchinda et al. 2011). Despite these positive results attributed to the support provided, the activity in the capital city (Port-au-Prince) is threatened by imported frozen chicken from the United States (Laroche and Awono 2008). Moreover, challenges such as bird mortality, poor hygienic conditions, management practices and inadequate supply of inputs (vaccines, drugs, feed) impede the performance of family poultry in Haiti (Nchinda et al 2012).  

These findings are unlike those of Alabi and Aruna (2006) who attributed the poor performance of family poultry in the Niger-Delta state of Nigeria to inefficiency with which inputs were used for family poultry production. This conclusion was arrived at after examining the technical efficiency of family poultry in the Niger-Delta state of Nigeria. Nchinda et al (2011) found out that family poultry husbandry in Haiti was economically profitable. However, they did not examine the efficiency with which the resources were allocated or used for family poultry husbandry. The technical efficiency of family poultry husbandry in Haiti has therefore not been studied. Hence, the objective of this paper is to determine the technical efficiency of family poultry husbandry in the Artibonite and South departments of Haiti. Technical efficiency in family poultry husbandry refers to the “ability to produce maximum output from a given set of inputs, given the available technology” (Alabi and Aruna 2006). These authors in a related study showed that the technical efficiency estimate for family poultry in the Niger-Delta state of Nigeria ranges between 0.09 and 0.63, with a mean of 0.22. This indicates that an average family poultry farmer in the study area was 22% efficient. This signified a high level of inefficiency in the way resources were used in backyard poultry husbandry in the study area. The methodology adopted for the study was similar to the empirical approach explained in the section that follows. 

Methodology

Study area 

The study was carried out in five of the twelve council areas in the Artibonite and South departments of Haiti where family poultry husbandry support project was implemented. The five council areas were chosen purposively because of the introduced innovations (enhanced technical skills, housing and improved cocks) in family poultry husbandry in the study areas. Data were collected from 150 respondents carrying family poultry activities. The data collected are specified in the empirical model below.  

Empirical modeling option 

The Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) method is used in modeling the technical efficiency of family poultry. This mode of stochastic production frontier modeling was simultaneously introduced by Aigner et al (1977) and Meeusen and Van den Broeck (1977). It was used by Alabi and Aruna (2006) in providing empirical evidence of family poultry efficiency in Niger-Delta state of Nigeria. The stochastic production frontier is written as: 

The stochastic frontier production function 

In this study, the empirical specification of stochastic frontier production function is given as: 

Results and discussion

Table 1 shows a half-normal stochastic frontier production function as a Cobb-Douglas function whose coefficients represent elasticities. The model is significant with a log likelihood of -47.7. The estimated return to scale calculated as the sum of the estimated output elasticities is 0.482, suggesting decreasing returns to scale. This is an indication that a unit increase in the quantity of resources used in family poultry husbandry would lead to a less than proportionate increase to the output of poultry income, ceteris paribus.  

The coefficient of land size is positive and highly significant (P<0.001). This indicate that an additional unit (ha) of land available to the farmers would lead to a 27% increase in the income raised from family poultry hence improvement in efficiency. The coefficient of expenditure on medication and vaccines is positive but not significant. Similarly, that on coop expenses is not significant though negative. Hence, additional expenditure on medication/vaccines and coop construction would not improve the economic efficiency at the current scale of family poultry husbandry. In fact, the coops are rather underutilized.  Paradoxically, a unit increase in the bird loss due to predators would rather increase family poultry income at 10% level of significance. However, this is a signal on how farmers respond to predator attack. The farmers respond to bird loss due to predators by culling the remaining birds hence a 20.4% increase in family poultry income.

The variance ratio γ associated with the variance of technical inefficiency effects in the stochastic frontier production is estimated to be 0.582. Hence, approximately fifty eight percent (58%) of total variability in family poultry income among the farmers is due to the differences in technical efficiencies that could not be explained by the production function. The value of gamma is not equal to zero (0). This allows us to reject the null hypothesis. The analysis rejects the null hypothesis (H₀) and accepts the alternative that indicates the presence of inefficiency effect for the specified family poultry frontier model. 

Efficiency indices 

The frequency distribution of the efficiency indices of family poultry farmers in the Haitian departments Artibonite and South is provided in table 2. The technical efficiency indices of all the respondents are below the optimum (100%) indicating they were operating below the optimum hence shows some degree of inefficiency. The results show that the mean technical efficiency index of an average performing family poultry farmer is 0.554 (or 55.4%) with the best performing farmer having an index of 0.855 (85.5%). The least efficient farmer has a technical efficiency of 0.092 (9.2%).

These findings therefore show a 44.6% potential for increasing the family poultry income at the present resource use level. On the other hand, input cost can be reduced by 44.6% on the average while remaining at the same level of production. Meanwhile, the wide technical efficiency gap (76.3%) between the most and least technically efficient family poultry farmer expresses the need to exploit the potentials of the efficient farmers in order to bridge this gap and enhance family poultry husbandry. Similarly, the most and least efficient farmers need technical support and advisory services from specialized agricultural development structures in order to optimize the use of inputs for family poultry husbandry as resource allocation appears to be one of the causes of inefficiency. 

The resource-use inefficiency among the family poultry farmers is explained mostly by the variables in table 3 as they account for 83% of inefficiency. In order words, the coefficient of determination (R²) is 0.83. The sex of the respondents, household size and the number of birds vaccinated were sources of inefficiency at 1% level of significance respectively. Meanwhile, the number of eggs sold the previous year and participation in the family poultry support project had a significant influence on the inefficiency parameters of family poultry at 5% and 1% levels of significance respectively as indicated on table 3.

Conclusions

• The results obtained show that family poultry farmers in the departments of Artibonite and South of Haiti were not operating on the production frontier, indicating that there is room for improvement in the efficiency with which the inputs were used for income generation. In fact, the farmers were operating in stage I of the production frontier hence inefficient in the way resources were allocated for family poultry husbandry.  

  
  

• The results reveal that the mean technical efficiency index of an average performing family poultry farmer is 0.554 (or 55.40%) with the best performing farmer having an index of 0.855 (85.50%). The least efficient farmer had a technical efficiency of 0.092 (9.20%). Consequently, there is a 44.60% potential for increasing the family poultry income at the present resource use level in order to attain the optimum efficiency of 100%. However, it must be noted that factors such as sex of respondents, participation in the family poultry program, household size and number of birds vaccinated were sources of inefficiency.  

Acknowledgement

The authors are very grateful to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations for financing the studies. Special thanks go to all the Haitian collaborators from the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), the FAO Representation in Haiti and at FAO Headquarters (Rome) for supporting the assessment process especially under very challenging working environment. 

References

Aigner D J, Lovell C A K, and Schmidt P 1977 Formulation and Estimation of Stochastic Frontier Production Function Models. Journal of Econometrics, 6: 21-37.

Alabi R A and Aruna M B 2006 Technical Efficiency of Family Poultry Production in Niger-Delta, Nigeria. Journal of Central European Agriculture, Vol. 6(4): pp. 531-538.

Dei H K, Alidu I, Otchere E O, Donkoh A, Boa-Amponsem K and Adam I 2009 Improving the Brooding Management of Local Guinea Fowl (Numida meleagris). Family Poultry Vol. 18(1&2):3-8

Dolberg F 2007 Poultry Production for Livelihood Improvement and Poverty Alleviation In O. Thieme and D. Pilling, eds. Proceedings of the International Conference Poultry in the Twenty-first Century: avian influenza and beyond, held 5-7 November 2007, Bangkok, Thailand. Rome. http://www.fao.org/Ag/againfo/home/events/bangkok2007/docs/part3/3_1.pdf.

Fasina F O, Wai M D, Mohammed, S N and Onyekonwu O N 2007 Contribution of poultry production to household income: a case of Jos South Local Government in Nigeria. Family Poultry Vol. 17 (1&2):30-34.

Gawande S S, Kalita N, Barua N and Saharia K K 2007 Indigenous chicken farming in rural conditions of Assam, India Family Poultry Vol. 17(1&2):15-29

Laroche D C and Awono C 2008 of urban chicken consumption in Southern countries: a comparison between Haiti and Cameroon, 12th Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE) August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/43938/2/171.pdf   

Meeusen W and Van Den Broeck J 1977 Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error. International Economic Review, 18:435-444.

Ministère de l’Agriculture des Ressources Naturelles et du Développement Rural 2007 Colloque National sur la problématique des Micro, Petites et Moyennes Entreprises du secteur agro-industriel, Caribe Convention Center, 11-12 May 2007. http://veterimed.org.ht/colloque/acte_final_MPME.pdf  

Nchinda V P, Thieme O, Ankers P, Crespi V and Ariste S 2011 Food security and economic importance of family poultry (chicken) husbandry program in Artibonite and South departments of Haiti. Livestock Research for Rural Development (23) 11, Article #201. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd23/9/nchi23201.htm 

Nchinda V P, Thieme O. and Ogali N I 2012 Performance of Family Poultry in Haiti and challenges of the Husbandry Support program, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Italy and Institute of Agricultural Research for Development. Submitted for review and publication to Family Poultry Communication Journal.

Sharma RK 2007 Role and Relevance of Rural Family Poultry in Developing Countries with Special Reference to India. Family Poultry Vol. 17(1&2):35-40.

Received 14 October 2012; Accepted 14 October 2012; Published 2 December 2012

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