**Background:** Starchy staples (cassava, yam, cocoyam, plantain) are critical for food security and livelihoods in Ghana, yet national average yields are over 50% below potential yields (e.g., cassava potential: 45 Mt/ha, actual: 0.66 Mt/ha). Previous research on agricultural efficiency in Ghana has focused on cereals, with limited attention to starchy staples, and often used small, single-season datasets that ignore technological heterogeneity across ecologies. This study addresses these gaps by using a large, multi-decade dataset and a meta-frontier approach to determine whether production shortfalls are driven by farmer-level technical inefficiency or by technology gaps between ecological zones.
**Methods:** The study uses household-level data from two sources: the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSPS, 2009/10 and 2014/15) and all seven rounds of the Ghana Living Standards Surveys (GLSS, 1987–2017). The final sample includes 15,405 farmers (11,585 cassava, 3,468 yam, 1,834 cocoyam, 6,226 plantain) from 15,133 households. Farmers were grouped into agro-ecological technology groups (Guinea Savannah, Sudan Savannah, Transition, Forest, Coastal Savannah). The authors applied Huang et al.'s (2014) two-step meta-stochastic-frontier (MSF) method, assuming a translog production function. In the first step, a stochastic frontier was estimated separately for each ecology and crop. In the second step, predicted outputs from ecology frontiers were used to estimate the meta-frontier. Technical efficiency (TE), technology gap ratio (TGR), and meta-technical efficiency (MTE) were calculated. Inputs included land, planting material, family labor, hired labor, and pesticides. Inefficiency drivers included farmer characteristics (age, education, gender) and institutional factors (land ownership, credit, extension, mechanization).
**Key Results:** Diagnostic tests confirmed the translog functional form was appropriate and that farmers operate under heterogeneous technologies across ecologies. For all crops, production exhibited decreasing returns to scale. The mean TGR (technology gap) was 0.89 for cassava, 0.65 for yam, 0.80 for cocoyam, and 0.85 for plantain, indicating average technology gaps of 11%, 35%, 20%, and 15%, respectively. Mean TE (technical efficiency) was 0.65 for cassava, 0.54 for yam, 0.47 for cocoyam, and 0.58 for plantain, indicating production losses due to inefficiency of 35%, 46%, 53%, and 42%, respectively. Mean MTE (overall performance relative to the best available technology) was 0.58 for cassava, 0.33 for yam, 0.36 for cocoyam, and 0.50 for plantain. Across all crops, the production shortfall was more influenced by pure farmer technical inefficiencies (about 45%) than by technology gaps (about 20%). For cassava, the Guinea Savannah zone had the highest TGR (0.92) and MTE (0.60). For yam, the Sudan Savannah zone had the highest TE (0.67) and MTE (0.55). Cocoyam TE was highest in the Transition zone (0.56), while plantain TE was highest in the Coastal Savannah (0.68). Factors associated with reduced inefficiency included male gender, land ownership, and access to extension services, while access to credit showed mixed effects.
**Clinical Implications:** While this is not a clinical study, the findings have significant public health implications. Starchy staples are a primary food source for the less affluent in Ghana, and their production shortfalls directly contribute to food insecurity (affecting 11.7% of Ghana's population in 2020). The study demonstrates that improving farmer technical efficiency—through better management practices, extension services, and efficient use of existing technologies—could substantially increase food availability without requiring new technological breakthroughs. This is particularly relevant for achieving Sustainable Development Goals 2 (zero hunger) and 12 (responsible consumption and production). The finding that yam, despite Ghana being the world's second-largest producer, is the most inefficiently produced staple, highlights a critical target for intervention to improve both domestic food security and export earnings.