Trend analysis of crop productivity growth in Nigeria (1961-2014)

This paper focuses on trend analysis of crop productivity growth in Nigeria between 1961 and 2014. It was therefore intended to estimate the effect of different factors of production that influence crop output and to compute their technical efficiency, technological change and total factor productivity change. Panel data was broken into land, labour, tractor, fertilizer and animal power. Descriptive statistics, Cobb-Douglas production analysis and Malmquist Productivity index were the tools employed for the analysis. The result of the trend analysis shows that time has a positive effect on crop production and also shows that there is an increase in crop output, land, labour, tractor, fertilizer and animal power over years. Land and animal power are statistically significant at 1% probability level and a unit increase in land and animal power, crop output increases by 2.176772 tons and 0.7531192 tons respectively, this implies that land and animal power have a positive effect on crop output in Nigeria. Labour and tractor have negative impact on crop output, while fertilizer has no significant effect on crop output. The efficiency change, technical change and total factor productivity change were also analyzed. According to the analysis, Nigeria experienced the highest agricultural productivity from 1992, with value of 1.166. It is therefore recommended that the use of agricultural land should be increased, relevant policies should address the constraints to technology progress, and efficiency should be promoted in order to improve productivity growth.