ABSTRACT

 The study examined the risk behaviour, efficiency and food security status of smallholder arable crop farmers in research adopted villages in Abia and Rivers States, Nigeria. Data were sourced using well structured questionnaire among 188 respondents and analyzed using descriptive statistics, stochastic frontier function, food security index and logistic regression. The results showed that 63.30% of the respondents participated in the adopted village project. The result also showed that 95% ofparticipants and 72.5% ofnon participants adopted improved varieties; 82.4% ofparticipants, and 68.1% ofnon participants adopted chemical fertilizer. Tractor and irrigation technologies were not adopted by the respondents. The result showed that 69.7% ofthe participants and 42.0% ofnon participants were risk takers. Age, gender, farming experience, farm size, extension contact, credit, education and membership of organization significantly influenced the risk taker participants while age, gender, extension contact, credit, education, farming experience and number of dependents influenced the non participant risk takers. The MLE of the stochastic production frontier function showed that sigma squared for the participants was 4.7261 and that ofnon participants was 4.2613. The gamma for participants and non participants being 0.84 and 0.77 respectively were significant at 1% indicating the goodness offit ofthe model. The MLE ofthe stochastic cost frontier for participants and non participants showed that sigma squared were 4.6060 and 4.3723 respectively and gamma for participants and non participants were 0.9899 and 0.9866 respectively were significant at 1%. The mean technical, economic and allocative efficiencies of participant were 0.89, 0.75 and 0.84 respectively while the mean of efficiencies of non participants were 0.78, 0.52 and 0.67 respectively. Gender, household size, membership of cooperative, farming experience and credit significantly influenced the technical efficiency of participants while the TE of non participants was influenced by gender and credit. The economic efficiency (EE) ofparticipants was significantly influenced by household size, farming experience, education and membership of cooperative while the EE of non participants was influenced by age and credit. The result also showed that 42.0% of the participating and 24.6% of non participating risk taking farmers were food secure. Age, gender, education, extension contact, farm size, credit and number ofdependents influenced the food security status ofthe participants while age, gender, income, household size, farming experience and farm size influenced the non participants. The study concludes that majority ofrespondents were risk takers, not efficient but food secure and recommends effective funding system forthe adopted village project for sustainability and inclusion of capital investments like tractor and irrigation facilities in the project.