Aim:
Tigray’s agriculture sector is greatly faced with challenges, so much so that productivity levels are beneath the national level. This is largely due to primitive farming practices and high input costs. The persistent issue of low agricultural productivity poses a very dangerous threat to household food security as well as income stability. Thus, this study aims to investigate the level and determinants of technical efficiency in taff production among smallholder farmers in northern Ethiopia using a stochastic frontier approach.

Material and methods:
The current study employs the stochastic frontier production function to estimate the technical efficiency of taff production in northern Ethiopia. Using multi-stage sampling methods, 392 taff farmers made up the sample.

Results:
The average efficiency was found to be 87.3%, which implies that the inefficiency cost for farmers amounted to 49.79 kg (or ETB 1394.12) in yields per tsmdi. The study also shows that the district’s taff production was significantly impacted by plot size, fertilizer, pesticides, and seed.

Conclusions:
Farmers with greater livestock, farm revenue, and high weeding frequency were also more likely to be more productive than their competitors. Moreover, consistent with authors’ expectations, male-headed households produced taff more effectively. In contrast to respondents with lower levels of education, heads of families with higher levels of education, against authors’ expectations and dominant literature, exhibited lower levels of efficiency. To increase taff output, it is therefore essential to align the existing system in such a way that it addresses the supply and availability of fertilizers, pesticides, and agronomic practices (weeding and other improved packages).