COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF UPLAND AND WET LAND SEASON OF RICE PRODUCTION IN EBONYI STATE

This research carried out a comparative economic analysis of upland and wet land rice production in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The study set out to compare the profitability and efficiency of resource use in upland and wet land  rice production. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 75  upland and 150 wet land rice farmers . Primary data were collected using structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, stochastic frontier production function, gross margin analysis, return on investment and student t test.
The result showed that rice productions were more dominated by male farmers in the upland with 89% than the wet land with 75% .The upland rice farmers participated more than the wet land farmers in years of schooling with 78% and 17%  schooling for more than 13 years respectively. The wet land farmers had more experienced in rice cultivation  than upland farmers with about 5% and 3% cultivating the crop for more than 30 years respectively. The upland rice farmers had more farm size than wet land farmers with average of 1.47 hectares and 1.30 hectares respectively. The wet land rice farmers had more household size than upland farmers with average of 9 and 8 people respectively.
The wet land rice farmers comprise of older people than the upland farmers with mean age 43.75 and 40.75 years respectively. The upland rice farmers accessed more credit than the wet land farmers with 47% and 37% accessibility respectively. The upland rice farmers showed higher allocative and economic mean efficiencies of 0.897 and 0.503 than wet land rice farmers with 0.648 and 0.453. The upland rice farmers were more profitable than the wet land rice farmers with gross margin of N97, 673.58 and N84, 278.01 per hectare of land, return on investment of 68K and 41K respectively. The thesis found out that both production systems showed no significant difference in their profitability level, The mean efficiencies of both systems were significant at p<05. Both production systems were operating in stage II of production cycle with return to scale of less than unity (0.84167 and 0. 95770) for upland and wet land rice respectively. Major constraints ranked by upland from the most important were insufficient finance, high cost of fertilizer, pest and diseases and high cost of labour among others while the wet land rice ranked inadequate finance, high cost of fertilizer, pest and diseases, inadequate seed and high cost of agrochemical among other constraints.
It was recommended that the farmers should form group contribution locally known as adashi to raise credit for their production, the extension agent should train farmers on how to multiply seeds at their farm, that the farmers association can go into partnership with our national universities to supply labour- saving technologies to reduce production cost, that government agencies responsible for execution of the  Growth Enhancement Scheme should identify and supply farmers with more need of fertilizers, and that the farmers’ association activities should attract all tiers of government to provide rural areas with modern infrastructures.