Kenya’s Crop Yield Potential Under The Background Of Sino-African Agricultural Cooperation

As the world’s second largest continent, Africa is rich in agricultural resources, however its food production is very backward. African countries have maintained a friendly diplomatic relationship with China, thus they strongly hope to increase food production through cooperation with China, which will also help China to achieve stable and sustainable food security objectives through taking advantage of global markets and natural resources. Kenya is located in East African Highlands where possess privileged natural resources, but its food production grew slowly and per capita food production declined for the last few decades, especially the dominant staple, maize, showed a trend of falling yield since 1982. Although Sino-Kenya Agricultural Cooperation began in the 1960s, few are on the crop production, so it’s necessary for China to know more on Kenya’s food production. In this context, it will show significant implication for insuring the direction of Sino-African agricultural cooperation to study the potential for crop production in Kenya and various constraints such as the level of inputs and productivity, technical efficiency of production and so on.Combining theoretical and empirical research methods, this study utilizes the stochastic frontier model and household survey data to analyze the maize yield potential in Kenya. On the one hand, from the perspective of current input and output levels, responsiveness of yield to production inputs is estimated by computing input elasticities as well as marginal production. On the other hand, from the perspective of production technical efficiency, the level of technical efficiency in Kenya maize production is calculated and determinants influencing technical efficiency are further studied.Results indicate that:(1) Yield has the highest responsiveness to seed, followed by fertilizer and labor. Currently inputs such as fertilizers, seeds and labor are not sufficient, which is one of the reasons hindering the improvements of Kenya maize yield. The maize yield will improve 0.4-1.8 times through appropriate increase in fertilizer, seed and labor inputs. (2) The average technical efficiency of maize production in Kenya is 70.7%, meaning that there is a significant loss of technical efficiency, which is the second reason hindering the improvement of the maize yield in Kenya. With the elimination of technical efficiency losses, Kenya maize yield will increase by 57.32 kg per Mu using the existing level of technology and inputs. In addition, areas with higher potential have higher technical efficiency and higher yield potential. (3) Among all the determinants, the number of years of using maize hybrid seed, whether using pesticides, gender and health of the household head, the number of years of using fertilizer, whether getting credit impact to maize production technical efficiency positively, while age of the household head, off-farm income and the distance from the tarmac road impact on the technical efficiency negatively. In addition, use of herbicides, education level of the household head, the distance to the extension service, areas of arable land, family size, the distance from the nearest market do not have a significant impact on the technical efficiency of maize production.Finally, given the empirical findings, this paper proposed recommendations for improving Kenya’s maize production, in order to provide advices to the Kenyan Government and the officials related to Sino-Kenyan agricultural cooperation.