"Increasing agricultural productivity is at the core of the Government of Mali's strategies to reduce poverty and achieve food security. Dry cereals, such as maize, sorghum, and millet, support the livelihoods of more than 60 percent of the Malian population. Public interventions to boost dry cereal productivity have mostly focused on investments to develop and promote farm intensification strategies. Historical data shows that yields have not responded proportionally. This study looks at an alternative approach on how to address the problem of low production performance. It emphasizes efficiency gains in the farm resource allocations, as a sustainable way to achieve productivity gain. Following a parametric approach, stochastic frontier Cobb-Douglas production functions for sorghum and maize are estimated. The levels of technical and allocative inefficiency in the production of these cereals are derived. Furthermore, the role of farmer organizations, as potential drivers to enhancing production efficiency, is investigated. Using a Propensity Score Matching approach, the marginal effects of membership in farmer organizations (FOs) and under different participation regimes are estimated. The results show that overall, membership in farmer organizations improves technical efficiency and reduces the costs of technical and allocative inefficiencies. Moreover, the results corroborate the fact that farmers who participate more actively in their FOs (e.g., group purchase of inputs, group sale or both) are more efficient. These findings suggest that addressing market imperfections and covering the market-related risks could incentivize farmers to adopt efficiency-increasing production decisions."--Page ii.
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