Abstract:
In the search for ways to boost agricultural productivity for the take‐off of the so‐advocated agricultural
transformation, we investigate in this paper whether there is room under current technologies to boost agricultural productivity
through technical efficiency, focusing on the five administrative regions of Togo. We use a regional stochastic frontier model,
which assumes that farmers maximize return to the outlay in order to account for potential endogeneity and regional
heterogeneities to a panel data for the period 2000–2014. The findings reveal that technical efficiency in agriculture varies
considerably across regions and over time. In addition, our results indicate that the country can rely on irrigation intensification
to sustain its move towards higher agricultural technical efficiency, while higher rainfall variability puts additional pressure on
the achievement of such objective. The policy message drawn from this study supports policy strategies designed to promote
irrigation and increased rainfall variability management tools, such as weather insurance, as sound agricultural technical
efficiency driven options.