Impact of Land Fragmentation on Technical Efficiency: The Case of Maize Farmers in the Transitional Zone Of Ghana

In African, maize is graded as the first cereal grain of greatest economic importance, at the expense of wheat and rice, which ranking second and third respectively (Thobatsi, 2009). Maize was identified as the solution to Africa food insecurity problem which can reduce poverty. In a summit held in Abuja by Head of States and Government from Africa in December 2006, the African Union Commission (AUC), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as well as regional economic communities (RECs) were admonished to support the campaign of maize production on the continent so as to achieve self-sufficiency by the year 2015 (Union, 2006). In order to boost maize production in the continent, the summit recognized the significance of accepting the variations in maize production on the continent. Hence, an investigation into the factors affecting the changing patterns in maize production was highly recommended and welcomed so as to improve production and market of maize in the continent.

Although the natural conditions in Ghana are suitable for agricultural production, it’srealized that local supply are still lagging behind demand, making the country food insecure (Wolter, 2009). According to the report of the Ministry of Food and Agricultural, Ghana’sproduction in agricultural product supply meets just 50% of domestic meat and cereal needs and 60% of domestic fish intake (MoFA, 2011). Although Ghana is attaining self-sufficiency in starchy staples like plantain, yam and cassava, production of maize is nowhere near demand (Wolter, 2009). With a larger section of maize supply going into food consumption in Ghana, arise in its productivity is unquestionably vital for achieving food security in the country. As maize also been a key component of livestock and poultry feed, the productivity and development of the poultry and livestock industries depend on the maize value chain. In the medium term, the demand for maize in Ghana was expected to grow at an annual rate of 2.6% (Akramov & Malek, 2012). Unfortunately, Ghana as at now is self-insufficient in the production of this very important commodity. Therefore, there is an urgent need for actions to betaken to improve productivity and aggregate production of maize so as to tackle Ghana’sendless demand for maize and food security in general would be improved (MiDA, 2010).

Land fragmentation, also known as pulverization, parcellization or scattering (Bentley, 1987), is defined in the literature as the situation in which a single farm consists of numerous spatially separated parcels (Bentley, 1987; Binns & Binns, 1950; King & Burton, 1982; McPherson, 1982) (McPherson, 1982). According to (Demetriou, 2014), defined Land fragmentation can also be defined as a state where a household owns several non-contiguous land plots, often scattered over a wide area. It is characterized as a fundamental rural spatial problem concerned with farms which are poorly organized at locations across space (King & Burton, 1982). It implies a defective land tenure structure that often leads to major problem at various spatial scales which may hinder effective agricultural production and sustainable rural development. Land fragmentation among others has been identified as the root cause of the low productivity of maize in the transitional zone of Ghana and the nation as a whole.

Four types of land fragmentation are well-known in the literature: they are; fragmentation of land ownership; land use; within a farm (or internal fragmentation); and separation of ownership and use (Van Dijk, 2003). Fragmentation of landownership refers to the number of landowners who use a given piece of land. Fragmentation of land use refers to the number of users that are also tenants of the land. Internal fragmentation emphasizes the number of parcels exploited by each user and considers parcel size, shape and distance as the main issues. Separation of ownership and use involves the situation where there is a discrepancy between ownership and use.

There exist an argument concerning whether land fragmentation is a problem or not (Nguyen, Cheng, & Findlay, 1996; P. Sklenicka, Janovska, Salek, Vlasak, & Molnarova, 2014; P. J. L. U. P. Sklenicka, 2016; Wu, Liu, & Davis, 2005). Some scholars are of a viewpoint that land fragmentation is a foundation of ineffective agriculture (Apata, 2016; Bentley, 1987; del Corral, Perez, & Roibás, 2011; Di Falco, Penov, Aleksiev, & Van Rensburg, 2010; Latruffe & Piet, 2014; Rahman & Rahman, 2009; P. Sklenicka et al., 2014). These people see land fragmentation as amain hindrance to efficient production system owing to the fact that continuous subdivision of farms would lead to small sized landholdings that may be difficult to economically operate. According to them, land fragmentation is said to impairment to productivity indifferent ways for example, fragmented landholdings can escalate transport costs. Also if the plots are located far from home, and far from each other, it will result in waste of time for the workers spent on travelling in between the plots and home. Management, supervision and securing of scattered plots can also be more difficult, time consuming, and costly. Land fragmentation have a possibility of increase the tendency of disputes between neighbor farmers (Mwebaza & Gaynor, 2002). Small fragmented landholdings can also result in difficulties to grow certain crops, and stop farmers from moving to high profit crops. More profitable crops, like fruit crops, needs larger plot areas, therefore if the farmers only owns small and fragmented plots they may be pushed to grow only less profitable crops (The World Bank, 2005). Other costs associated cost of land fragmentation include the hindering of economies of scale and farm mechanization. Small and scattered plots hinder the use of machinery and other large scale agricultural practices. In small fields operating machines and moving them from one field to another can cause problems. Small landholdings might also discourage the development of infrastructure like transportation, communication, irrigation, and drainage (Mwebaza & Gaynor, 2002). Also, it is observed that, financial institutions are sometimes reluctant to take small and scattered landholdings as collateral, which prevents farmers from procuring credit to make investments. With these disadvantages, land fragmentation is considered as defective and this has in turn caused several countries to implement land consolidation programs (Shao et al., 2006; Talyzin, Andersson, Sundqvist, Kurnosov, & Dubrovinsky, 2007).

Other scholars on a contrary viewpoint sees land fragmentation as a positive situation where farmers can cultivate many environmental zones, minimize production risk and optimize the schedule for cropping activities (Bentley, 1987). The known advantages of land fragmentation in this viewpoint are mostly related to the demand-side causes of fragmentation. Among the benefits linked with land fragmentation is the variety of soil and growing conditions that decrease the risk of total crop failure by offering the farmer a variety of soil and growing conditions. They are of the view that many different plots allow farmers access to land of different qualities in terms soil, slope, microclimatic variations etc. Another advantage of land fragmentation is the use of multiple eco zones. Holding different plots enable farmers to cultivate a wider mix of crops. Since crops ripe at different times when the plots are indifferent altitudes, spreading out the agriculture work like harvest and sawing during a longer period of time helps farmers to avoid household labour bottlenecks. Farmers may also desire fragmented landholdings in situations like diseconomies of scale with respect to the size of the parcels. Previous studies and ample literature have studied the connection between land fragmentation and land productivity, or efficiency at farm level, (Blarel, Hazell, Place, & Quiggin, 1992; Thomas & Economics, 2006; Van Hung, MacAulay, Marsh, & economics, 2007; Wu et al., 2005) (Chen, Huffman, & Rozelle, 2009; Rahman & Rahman, 2009; Thomas & Economics, 2006). The focus of this paper is to examine the impact of land fragmentation on technical efficiency (TE) of maize farmers in the transitional zone of Ghana. As far as we know, no research has empirically estimated the impact of land fragmentation on maize production output in the transitional zone of Ghana, which justifies the need for this study. The specific objectives were to: i. know the pattern of landholdings in the study area and ii. Investigate the determinants of technical efficiency of maize farmers in the study area. 1.1 Conceptual framework and literature review Agricultural land fragmentation is well-known in the world and it is usually attributed to numerous factors such as inheritance laws, political system, historical antecedence and consolidation processes, and transaction costs inland markets, urban development policies, and personal valuation of landownership (Balogun & Akinyemi, 2017). Land fragmentation is often believed to be one of the main problems prevailing in rural land management, especially in developing countries (Rusu, Florian, Popa, Marin, & Pamfil, 2002; Wan & Cheng, 2001). Numerous studies have contended that the adverse effects of land fragmentation overshadow its possible benefits, mostly because it expands economic costs and decreases agricultural efficiency (Wan & Cheng, 2001). Specifically, it is viewed as a hindrance to adoption of modern agricultural technologies, to construction and maintenance of rural infrastructure and thus as an impediment to agricultural modernization. There is inadequate proof available in the literature on the output and labour allocation influence of land fragmentation. With the use of the Cobb-Douglas production function, Fleisher and Liu (1992) estimated that land fragmentation leads to inefficiency in agricultural production. This result was reaffirmed by Nguyen, Cheng, and Findlay (1996), who also in their studies established a positive relationship between plot size and output for major grain crops in China. Whereas (Chen et al., 2009) established that fragmented farm structures links to higher labour costs; it is not completely clear why this implies that land consolidation does release rural labour, as the authors do not investigate the actual mechanisms of labour allocation any further. 1.1.1 Concept and measurement of land fragmentation Land fragmentation is said to exist when a household have controls on a number of owned or rented noncontiguous landsat the same time. Numerous factors are accountable for agricultural land fragmentation, among the main factors that contribute to subdivision and fragmentation are, traditional system of inheritance of land (inheritance laws, which divide a family’sland among all the remaining sons, which means as the population increases, not only does the size of holdings fall, but fragmentation also increase into small plots, scattered over a wide area), (Gebeyehu, 1995). Agricultural land fragmentation in the world has become rampant in the world and it is usually credited to numerous factors such as inheritance laws, political system, historical antecedence and consolidation processes, and transaction costs inland markets, urban development policies, and personal valuation of landownership (Blarel et al., 1992; King & Burton, 1982). It is believed that Land fragmentation is one of the main problems existing in rural land management, most especially when it comes to developing countries (Wan & Cheng, 2001). Numerous studies are in support of the argument that, the adverse effects of land fragmentation dominate its likely benefits, mostly because it expands economic costs and decreases agricultural efficiency (Wan & Cheng, 2001). Land fragmentation is viewed as a hindrance to adoption and implementation of modern agricultural technologies, to construction and maintenance of rural infrastructure and therefore as an impediment to agricultural modernization. There is inadequate evidence presented in the literature on the output and labour allocation impacts on land fragmentation. Fleisher and Liu (1992) estimated that land fragmentation led to inefficiency in agricultural production by the use of Cobb-Douglas production function. Nguyen, Cheng, and Findlay (1996), also confirm the above result by establishing a positive relationship between plot size and output for major grain crops in China. Land fragmentation can be measured with two different approaches namely: single dimension indicators and integrated indicators. Under the single dimension, one indicator is used to measure the extent of land fragmentation, indicators such as, farm size, total number of plots in the farm, average plot size, distribution of plot sizes, spatial distribution of plots, and the shape of plots are commonly used in the literature (Bentley, 1987). Farm size is used to measure the total holding of a farm but among the remaining parameters, size and spatial distribution (i.e. distance) are often considered to be most significant (Shuhao, 2005). The integrated indicators capture the information from several single indicators into one index. The most commonly used index is the Simpson index (Blarel et al., 1992). The Simpson index (SI) measures the degree of land fragmentation in the following way: ap2 (1)

SI 1 (ap)2 where apis the area of each plot. The Simpson index is positioned between 0 and 1. Differently to the Jawanski Index (JI), a higher SI value matches with a higher degree of land fragmentation. The value of the Simpson index is also determined by the number of plots, average plot size and the plot size distribution. Also, farm size, distance and plot shape are no taken into account. 1.1.2 Factors that influence Agricultural Productivity Factors influencing the output of farmers can be categorized into three, firstly, the physical inputs engaged (capital, land and labour), secondly, the characteristics of farmers and farm, and lastly, factors that are external to the farmer such as climatic conditions, government and institutional policies (Wiebe et al, 2001). Capital inputs employed comprises of herbicide, fertilizer, seed, pesticide as well as farm tools and implements. The second category which is the characteristics of the farm and farmer covers factors such as topography and size of land cultivated, distance of farm from input and output markets, level of education, age, gender, family size etc. Soil conditions and weather as external factors including temperature, rainfall and humidity (Michele, 2001). Shamsudeen et al (2013), Sienso et al (2013), Oppong (2013) and Bempomaa and Acquah (2014) have testified to significant positive impacts of size of land cultivated on the productivity of maize production in Ghana. Sienso et al (2013), Oppong (2013) and Bempomaa and Acquah (2014) for example discovered 5.3%, 0.201% and 1.29% respectively rises in maize outputs for the respective above-mentioned studies in Ghana. Fan and Chan-Kang (2005), studies into farm size, productivity, and poverty in Asian agriculture in addition to that of Goni et al (2007) analysis of resource-use efficiency in rice production in Nigeria also exposed positive correlations between farm size and agricultural productivity. Nevertheless, Pender et al (2004), Okoye et al (2008), Stifel and Minten (2008), Masterson (2007) as well as Byiringiro and Reardon (1996) reported that, there is a negative relationship between area for crop production and productivity. Farmer’sresources are limited and may not be able to meet the requirements of large farmlands that they cultivate. Farmers are consequently incapable to provide for and apply key production inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, improve seeds, etc. thereby resulting in low productivity. 1.1.3 Technical Efficiency among Smallholder Farmers Technical efficiency as an element of economic efficiency reveals the farmers ability to maximize productivity from a given level of inputs (e.g. output-orientation).Theoretical developments in assessing technical efficiency can be traced back to the works of Debreu (1959). There has been numerous literature on the technical efficiency of smallholder agricultural outstanding among them are the works of, Basnayake and Gunaratne (2002), Barnes (2008), Duvel et al (2003), Shapiro and Muller (1977) and Seyoum et al (1998). Large number of studies have associated farmers` age, farmers` educational level, access to extension, access to credit, landholding size, number of plots owned, farmers` family size, gender, tenancy, market access, and farmers` access to improved technologies such as fertilizer, agro-chemicals, tractor and improved seeds with technical efficiency. The works of the following, Amos, 2007; Ahmad et al, 2002; Tchale and Sauer, 2007; Basnayake and Gunaratne, 2002, reported that, farmers` age and education, access to extension, access to credit, family size and tenancy as well as farmers access to fertilizer, agrochemicals, tractors and improved seeds have positive effect on technical efficiency of maize production. The impact of educational level on the efficiency and productivity of cereals was also scrutinized by Weir (1999). Weir and Knight (2000) also studied the impact of education externalities on the productivity and technical efficiency of crop producers and found that education externalities resulted from use and dissemination of innovations that shifted out the production frontier. Notwithstanding the outcomes there is one identified shortcoming of the Weir (1999) and Weir and Knight (2000a) work that is, it only investigate formal education as the only source of variations in technical efficiency of smallholder farmers. Amos (2007), Raghbendra et al (2005) and Barnes (2008) holds the view that there is a relationship between landholding size and technical efficiency to be positive. However, impact of the number of plots on technical efficiency has been reported by Raghbendra et al (2005) to be negative, that island fragmentation (as measured by number of plots) has a negative impact on productivity. There has been disagreeing results on the impact of socio-economic variables such as gender on technical efficiency. While some studies by (Kuwornu et al, 2013; Bempomaa and Acquah, 2014) reported that gender of the farmer has no significant influence on technical efficiency, other studies (Sienso et al, 2013; Shamsudeen et al, 2013; Oppong, 2013) are on a contrary view that gender plays an important role on Technical efficiency. Addai (2011) also studied the Technical Efficiency of Maize Producers in three Agro Ecological Zones of Ghana and reported a mean technical efficiency of 64.1 % for maize producers in techosen agro ecological zones. The study again identifies the determinants of technical efficiency of maize producers across the selected agro ecological zones to be contact with extension agents, mono cropping, gender, age, landownership and access to credit.