Abstract

In spite of the great potentials of fish hatchery enterprise, factors such as low technical know-how and high cost of fish hatchery inputs have limited the contribution of the enterprise in enhancing food security. Also, inefficiency of available resources has remained an unanswered question in the quest for increasing fish production in Nigeria. This study therefore estimated the technical efficiency of fish hatchery enterprise in Osun State Nigeria using data envelopment analysis and multiple regression analysis. A multi‑stage sampling procedure was employed to select 227 fish hatchery farmers from three agricultural zones in the study area. Findings showed that technical efficiency varied from 0.36 to 0.97, with a mean of 0.75. These varying indices of efficiency in the fish hatchery enterprises indicate great potential to achieve productivity growth through improved efficiency, using existing technologies. Results of the multiple regression indicated that age, household size, level of education, fish hatchery experience and access to credit were significant and positively related to technical efficiency. These results suggest that increase in fish hatchery experience and access to credit could jointly contribute to an improvement in efficiency of fish hatchery production in the study area. Fish hatchery farmers should explore the opportunity of cooperative associations to pool resources together by organizing seminars/workshops on improved innovations in relation to fish hatchery business so as to improve efficiency of the enterprise.

Key words: Technical efficiency, Scale efficiency, DEA, Fish hatchery business