Scenario of Agricultural Land-Use Intensification Practice and Production Efficiency among Food Crop Farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria: A Two-Stage Least Square Regression

Background and Objective: Agricultural land-use intensification reduces unusual cutting down of forest resources and leads to an economic pathway of improving farmland productivity if sustainably practised. Therefore, this study looked into the endogenous effect of agricultural land-use intensification on production efficiency among food crop farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: The study used a two-stage sampling method to select 346 respondents. Primary data were collected with the aid of a questionnaire and estimated using descriptive statistics, Ruthenberg (R) index, stochastic frontier analysis and two-stage least square regression. Results: Most farmers are involved in the cultivation of three food crops (maize/cassava/okra) at least with an average farm size of 7.67 ha. The R-index for measuring agricultural land-use intensification revealed that 3.18, 19.65 and 77.17% of the farmers fell into low (R<33%), medium (33≤R≤66%) and high (R>66%) land-use intensities, respectively. The mean production efficiencies were 0.5492, 0.7788 and 0.7872 for cassava, maize and okra respectively. Also, land-use intensification positively influenced maize (p = 0.030) and cassava (p = 0.039) farms’ efficiency levels. Conclusion: It is concluded that farm production efficiency is considerably dragged by agricultural land-use intensification hence the findings of this study may be relevant for making agricultural land policy.