Determinants and Efficiency of Sharecropping in Rice Production

the Case of Fogera District, Ethiopia,

Abstract

In this paper, the authors analyze the factors that affect choice of share tenancy and the differences in input and output intensities between owned and sharecropped land. The analysis is based on the responses of randomly selected 120 farm households in Fogera district of West Amhara Region. The authors considered 398 plots cultivated by the sample households whereby a multinomial logistic regression model was employed. The results show that the decision to share-in land is positively related to the relative size of adult family labor to land while it is negatively related to age of the household head, female headship of households and the perceived monetary value of a plot. On the other hand, the decision to share-out land is positively related to female headship and credit access but it is negatively related to oxen ownership, absence of disabled adult family labor and the perceived value of a plot. The results also have some implications on Marshallian arguments against sharecropping tenancy which states that sharecropping is inefficient as compared to fixed rent tenancy since it doesn't provide the highest incentive for the tenant to put maximum efforts in the production process while monitoring costs are usually high to be fully incurred by the landlord. In this regard, this analysis which compares sharecropping tenancy with other forms of cultivation arrangement with respect to three major inputs (labor, draft power, and seed) does not support the Marshallian argument.