Measuring technical, scale and irrigation efficiencies of sugarcane small-scale growers in the Nkomazi Municipality of Mpumalanga Province

Abstract

The largest crop in the world in terms of production is sugarcane. It is produced in three provinces in South Africa. With approximately 50% of the gross farming income from field crops in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape coming from sugarcane, it is a critical crop for these regions. Small-scale sugarcane growers in South Africa are faced with numerous challenges such as technology acquisition, high input prices, reduced yield; lack of water for irrigation, persistent pests and land disputes. The study aimed to analyse the technical, scale and irrigation efficiencies and socio-economic factors that affect the efficiencies of small-scale sugarcane growers in the Nkomazi Municipality. For the study, 90 small-scale sugarcane growers were selected using a simple random sampling method. The research area’s small-scale sugarcane growers, according to the descriptive statistics of socioeconomic characteristics, are on average, 68 years old. The growers had an average of 8.81 years of farming experience. Their average off-farm income was R6 800, and their education levels ranged from 0 to 16 years. In one production year, growers received an average of 76.27 hours of extension assistance. The Technical Efficiency (TE) scores of sugarcane growers had a mean of 90.8% with a minimum of 83% and a maximum of 100%, according to the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) data. This indicates that over 83% of the maximum practicable yield was produced by growers who were 90.8% technically efficient. The minimum of 83% indicates that to get the necessary score and be considered technically efficient, the least efficient grower would need to reduce input usage by 17%. Sugarcane growers’ SE ratings ranged from a minimum of 26% to a maximum of 100%, with a mean of 69.04%. This indicates that 69% of the growers were effective at scaling up. The minimum scale efficiency level of 17.78 suggests that producers are not maximising output by leveraging land efficiency. According to the DEA water slack data, sugarcane growers had an average irrigation efficiency of 90.8%, with a range of 87% to 100%. The minimal efficiency score of 87% indicates that the grower with the lowest efficiency at 87% needs to reduce on water use by 13% to meet the standard and be deemed efficient in their irrigation. Both the slack-based analysis’ and the non-radial Slack-based Measure analysis’ average irrigation efficiency ratings can be rounded to 91%: 90.8% and 90.55%, respectively. These average scores for irrigation efficiency show that 91% of the sugarcane growers in the survey use water effectively. The truncated regression results indicated that all the socioeconomic variables expected to affect technical efficiency were significant. The coefficients of the included variables were -0.086, 0.098, 0.0463, -0.112, 0.144, 0.008, 0.063 and-0.111 corresponding to the age, gender, farming experience, level of education, off-farm income, extension access, extension hours and irrigation system, respectively. The study suggests that while some small-scale growers are interested in off-farm activities, they should have better access to extension services through various platforms, such as local radio stations. Therefore, extension officers should get a slot with the local radio station to access the small-scale sugarcane growers.