TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF THE UGANDAN MATOKE FARMS

The issues of measurement of technical efficiency in the production of matoke in Uganda are investigated. A Cobb-Douglas functional form is used to represent the underlying production technology and corrected l east squares procedure to estimate the model and the farm-specific mea sures of technical efficiency. The data consists of a crossection of 2 88 matoke-producing family farms during the crop year 1990-1991. The p roductive performance of farms are compared according to the size of l and. The impact of various production characteristics on the productio n structure of the farms is also tested. The empirical results from a comparison of different farm sizes show very small variations in mean efficiency between the different size classes. Some variations in the distribution of farms within each size-class are observed. The mean te chnical efficiency is found to be 65%.