Evaluation of Economic Efficiency of Smallholder Orange Farmers in Machakos County, Kenya

Agricultural Economics

Abstract Orange is one of the world’s main fruit trees with global availability, popularity and importance in contributing toward livelihoods transformation and improvement. This study attempts to estimate technical, allocative and economic efficiency levels and the influence of social economic and institutional factors on the levels of efficiency among the sampled 169 smallholder orange farmers within Machakos County in Kenya. This research finding established that, mean technical, allocative an economic efficiency among orange farmers were 60.94%, 79.59% and 48.50% respectively. Economic efficiency was strongly influenced by age, farming experience, irrigation, credit and cost of inputs. In order to enhance economic efficiency based on the analysis, the study proposed; encouragement and promotion of youth to take up orange farming, mobilization and organization of non-member farmers to form or join groups to gain to easier access to extension and credit, development of credit facilities tailored made to meet farmers’, needs, development of irrigation infrastructure for all year-round production and inputs prize stabilization mechanism through subsidies and vouchers.

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