Evaluation of Technical Efficiency of Rabbit Production in Buuri Sub -County, Meru County, Kenya

Abstract

Current rabbit production in Buuri Sub county stands at 1.2 Metric tons of meat against a potential of 8.4 Metric tons per year. This productivity gap is wide and indicative of poor and low performance of the enterprise in rural areas of Kenya and specifically Buuri Sub County. Thus the main objective of this study was to investigate the technical efficiency of rabbit production and its contribution to household food production and family welfare under conditions of resource scarcity. The technical efficiency of rabbit production was evaluated to explain the paradox behind the low productivity of rabbit enterprises in Buuri sub-county. A multistage simple random sampling procedure was employed to get 139 respondents for the study. A semi structured and pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect data from the selected small holder rabbit producers through face to face interview of the household heads. The study used descriptive statistics for the analysis of socioeconomic and institutional attributes of the rabbit producers. The stochastic frontier production parametric method was used for the efficiency analysis. The results showed mean technical efficiencies among the rabbit farms were 36.83%. The farmers are not producing the rabbit output at minimum costs.  Further the study found that the capital is the most important rabbit output enhancing variable among all studied parameters. The Tobit model results indicated that increased access to education, trainings and credit to the farmers led to improved rabbit efficiency. More importantly county government and non-governmental agencies should make deliberate attempts for improved farmer-extension and research linkage for better technology transfer and adoption by farmers, leading to more productive rabbit enterprises hence improved incomes and thus reducing poverty level among farmers.

Keywords: Technical efficiency, rabbit breeds, efficiency, rabbit keeping, backyard farming enterprises, stochastic frontier