Technology and managerial performance of farm operators by age in Ghana.

Farm-level decision-making by resource-constrained smallholder farmers, such as investment in improved farm management practices and technologies may considerably be influenced by the age of farm operators. However, evidence of the effect of farm operators' age on farm efficiency and technological endowment, and consequently on agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa has been inexact. To contribute to an improved understanding of the age-efficiency-productivity nexus, this study investigates the impacts of farm operators' age on agricultural productivity by evaluating the managerial performance and technological endowment of the operators, disaggregated across three age cohorts, viz. the youth, middle-aged and the aged. We fit the meta-stochastic frontier statistical framework to a country-wide sample of 24,596 farm households, spanning three decades of data collection in Ghana. The results show that relative to the potentials of each age cohort, more output can be generated using currently allocated inputs, but under improved farm management practices. Whereas we did not find evidence for possible age-related technological differences in agricultural production in Ghana, we did find strong support for possible age-induced managerial differences in farm production, with youth operators being more efficient than their middle-aged and aged peers. Consequently, the age of farm operators significantly affects agricultural productivity in Ghana through their efficiency of resource allocation. We find these results relevant for policy attention, in terms of the targeting of support to farm operators in the various age cohorts and in the country's quest to achieve greater agricultural productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]