Resource allocation influences productivity or profitability of crop enterprises, particularly\namong smallholder agricultural systems, yet many empirical studies tend to ignore this fact.\nIn this paper, we use profit efficiency measurement as a proxy for comparative advantage to\ndecide the crop for specialization in the Ejura-Sekyedumase District in the Ashanti Region of\nGhana. Using farm level data from 199 respondents who cultivate maize and cowpea, we\nemploy the stochastic frontier function to measure and compare the profit efficiencies of\nfarmers cultivating the two crops. Results from the analysis showed that the profit efficiency\nof maize farmers ranges between 47% and 96.7% while that of cowpea farmers ranges\nbetween 50.3% and 100% with mean profit efficiencies of 89% and 95% for maize and\ncowpea respectively. The study further showed that education, farm size and on-farm labour\nparticipation were major significant factors which influences profit efficiency in the study\narea. Farmers in Ejura-Sekyedumase stand to gain improvements in household welfare if\navailable land and other scarce resources are allocated to cowpea agribusiness.
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