Ogunwande and Adesokan Greener Journal of Agricultural Sciences Vol. 10(3), pp. 136-144, 2020 ISSN: 2276-7770 Copyright ©2020, the copyright of this article is retained by the author(s) https://gjournals.org/GJAS Cost Efficiency Analysis of Maize Production Among Rural Small Scale Farmers in Itesiwaju Local Government Area (LGA), Oyo State, Nigeria *Ogunwande Isaac Olusegun; Adesokan Goodness Eniola Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Oyo State, Nigeria. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article No.: 081820103 Type: Research Maize is a crop commonly cultivated in Nigeria and its demand and supply is on the increase every year, this nevertheless pave the way for involvement of majority of rural households in every stage of production. The paper explored the cost efficiency of maize production in Itesiwaju local government area(LGA) of Oyo State. Primary data was collected from 173 maize farmers and this was achieved through the use of copies of well-structured questionnaire and application of multistage sampling procedure. Data collected were analysed using Stochastic Frontier Cost Function (SFCF) in determining factors affecting cost efficiency among farms. Results on socioeconomic characteristics of maize farmers showed the average quantitative variables age (46 years), household size (8 members), years of experience (28 years) and number of extension contacts (11 visits) while the mean seed and agrochemical cost were N1,643.00 and N3,150.00 respectively. Farming experience (p<0.1), extension contacts (p<0.05) and household size (p<0.1) were found to increase cost efficiency of farms. Cost variables such as labour (p<0.05), seed (p<0.1) and agrochemicals also increased the cost efficiency of maize farms. Gamma (ϓ) showed that about 0.98 percent of the variation in cost of production was due to factors beyond farmers’ control and sigma square (σ2) of 1.378(p<0.01) explained the suitability and appropriateness of the analytical model. The Return to Scale was 1.154 and the majority of maize farmers had clustered cost efficiency distribution between the range of 0.51 and 0.99 suggesting being cost efficient in maize production. Accepted: 22/08/2020 Published: 11/09/2020 *Corresponding Author Ogunwande Isaac Olusegun E-mail: ioogunwande@ futa.edu.ng Keywords: Maize; Cost Efficiency; Farmers; Maize Production; Stochastic Frontier Return to Content View [Full Article – PDF] [Full Article – HTML] [Full Article – EPUB] Post-Publication Peer-review Rundown View/get involved, click [Peer-review] REFERENCES Battese, G.E. and Coelli, T.J. (1993). 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Greener Journal of Agricultural Sciences 10(3): 136-144.