Productivity and Efficiency of Small Scale Agriculture in Ethiopia Dawit Kelemework Mekonnen Graduate Student Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Georgia, 305 Conner Hall Athens, Georgia, 30602 USA Email:
[email protected] Jeffrey H. Dorfman Professor Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Georgia 312 Conner Hall Athens, Georgia, 30602 USA Email:
[email protected] Esendugue Greg Fonsah Associate Professor Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Georgia 15 RDC Rd, Room 118 P.O. Box 1209 Tifton, Georgia, 31793 USA Email:
[email protected] ISelected paper prepared for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) Annual Meeting, Orlando, Florida, 3-5 February 2013. IICopyright 2012 by Dawit K. Mekonnen, Jeffrey H. Dorfman, and Esendugue Greg Fonsah. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Abstract We estimate a distance function of grains production using generalized method of mo- ments that enables us to accommodate multiple outputs of farmers as well as address the endogeneity issues that are related with the use of distance functions for multi-output pro- duction. Using a panel data set of Ethiopian subsistence farmers, we find that the most important factors determining farmers' efficiency in Ethiopia are having access to the public extension system, participation in off-farm activities, participation in labor sharing arrange- ments, gender of the household head, and the extent to which farmers are forced to produce on marginal and steeply sloped plots. Average farmers in Ethiopia are producing less than 60% of the most efficient farmers.