Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to Estimate Technical and Scale Efficiencies of Smallholder Pineapple Farmers in Ghana

The DEA technique was appropriate because it allowed the researcher to estimate technical efficiency on constant returns assumptions, variable returns assumptions, and further compute the scale efficicincy. The Central Region of Ghana was purposefully selected in this study since it is one of the major pineapple growing areas in Ghana.

The sampling process includes 15 smallholder pineapple farmers from the Abura-Asiebu-Kwamankese district, 875 farmers from the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem district and 1051 from the Ekumfi district as designated by Ghanaian Department of Agriculture across the Central Region. The technique on sample size determination for a given population was suggested in Krejcie and Morgan (1970) which was used to delineate the current sample size based on the sampling frame(s).