Efficient allocation of resources has been a problem among farming households in Nigeria. This study compares the allocative efficiency of male and female beneficiaries of Fadama III support in Adamawa State who are into crop production. Primary data was used for the study and collected from a random sample of 183 male and 95 female Fadama III beneficiaries from ten participating Local Government Areas of the state that were purposively selected for the study. The analytical tools employed were simple descriptive statistics involving the use of frequency distribution tables and percentages, stochastic frontier cost function and difference of mean statistics. The socio-economic characteristics of the respondents reveal that male and female beneficiaries had a mean age 40 years and 41 years respectively, with majority (above 75%) of them attaining up to secondary level of education. Their average farm sizes were 1.89 hectares and 1.39 hectares respectively, an indication that crop production among them is undertaken on a small scale. The Maximum Likelihood Estimates of the parameters of stochastic frontier cost function for male and female beneficiaries shows that all the parameter estimates are positive, indicating a direct relationship with the total cost of production. For the male beneficiaries, the coefficients of agrochemicals, inorganic fertilizers, seed and crop output were all significant at varying levels. Similarly, for female beneficiaries the coefficient of hired labour was also significant in addition to those of the male beneficiaries. The estimated gamma values were 0.85 and 0.82 for the male and female respondents respectively and were both significant at 1% level. For the inefficiency model of the male beneficiaries, the coefficients of age, farming experience, education and marital status were all significant at 1% level. Similarly, for female beneficiaries, the coefficient of household size was also significant in the addition to those of the male beneficiaries except marital status. The mean allocative efficiency for the male respondents was 0.86 while that of the female respondents was 0.83. This means that an average male farmer in the study area has the scope of increasing allocative efficiency by 14% as compared with 17% for the female farmer under the existing technology. The t-test result shows a no significant difference between the mean allocative efficiency of the male and female beneficiaries. The study recommends among others the use of model farmers with high allocative efficiency estimate identified in the study to be used to transfer knowledge to other farmers in order to increase their allocative efficiency.
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