The Empirical Economics Letters, 6(6): (November 2007) ISSN 1681 8997 Technical, Allocative and Economic Efficiency of Upland Rice Farmers in Nigeria: A Stochastic Frontier Approach Ogundari Kolawole International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria Email: kogundari@yahoo.com Abstract: This study disaggregates production efficiency of 135 sampled rice farmers from Ekiti state Nigeria into technical (TE), economic (EE) and allocative (AE) efficiency scores. Stochastic Frontier technique was employed in the analysis. The MLE reveals that planting materials (seeds), labour and fertilizer were significant factors, while average TE, AE and EE of 90.8 percent, 89 percent and 81.4 percent respectively were obtained. The implication of this is that, challenges facing the rice farmers enhance their cost minimizing skills as TE contribute more to EE than AE, such that policy formulation on the part of government that will strengthen existing extension facilities to ensure efficient credit delivery system which will enable farmers to access inputs in cost-minimizing way should be encouraged and adopted to meet millennium development goal in the country. Key word: Rice, stochastic production and cost frontier, Nigeria 1. Introduction In Nigeria, grains like maize, sorghum and millet form a significant portion of food consumed in the country. Rice especially has become a stable food in most homes today and unfortunately the domestic production of this grain has not met the demand, leading to food shortage problems. F.A.O (2003) projected growth in rice consumption for Nigeria at 4.5 percent per annum beyond year 2000. In a bid to address the demand/ supply gap for this staple, government at various times come up with policies and programmes of which is rice importation to supplement the local production was one of such policy . The policy no doubt constitutes drain on the country’s hard earned foreign exchange earnings. F.A.O (2004) estimates indicated that Nigerian rice import increases from 2,630 tones in 1970 to 1.876 million metric tones in 2002. The total import also stood at 1.9 million tones in 2003 (Gain, 2004). The objective of this study is to measure the technical (TE), economic (EE) and allocation (AE) efficiencies of upland rice farmers in Nigeria with a view of examining the level of