Production of yam is a labour intensive set of activities especially in the Tropics. In
Eastern Nigeria this is done by small farmers at subsistent level due to inadequate and
short supply of labour. This study examined labour-use efficiency by smallholder yam
farmers in Abia State, Nigeria. A two-stage random sampling technique was used to
select 120 smallholder yam farmers from Ikwuano and Umuahia North Local
Government Areas of the state. Data were collected during a survey with a wellstructured
questionnaire administered by personal interview method with the farmers.
The result revealed that farm households provided an average of 336 man-days used in
yam production activities, with 36.66% using hired labour while family labour, share
croppers, and exchange labour provided the balance labour (63.34%) required. The
Cobb-Douglas functional form of labour-use frontier estimates shows that the quantity of
harvested yam, size of cleared farm land and quantity of fertilizer applied significantly
affected the amount of labour used in yam production at 10.0%, 5.0% and 1.0% level of
significance respectively. The socio-economic determinants of labour use efficiency were
age, education, farm size, gender, labour wage and household size which were
statistically significant at 1.0% risk level except the coefficient of age which was
significant at 5.0% risk level. The result showed that the estimated farm labour-use
efficiency ranged from 0.20 to 0.97 with a mean labour-use efficiency value of 0.76.
Policies aimed at increasing yam farmers’ scale of operation through improved access to
production inputs like fertilizer, agrochemical and capital are required for increasing
labour use efficiency in the area.