Measuring technical efficiency of bottle gourd and brinjal farming in Dhaka district of Bangladesh: Stochastic frontier approach

Abstract

Shortage and inefficient use of resource in agricultural activities in Bangladesh are emphasizing to measure efficiency for increasing productivity with the highest efficiency and ensure the sustainable development of the agricultural sector. The motive of the study is to estimate technical efficiency by using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) of brinjal and bottle gourd cultivation in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Tobit regression was applied to determine the elements affecting the efficiency and Cobb-Douglas production model was applied to pick out elements affecting the gross return of bottle gourd and brinjal. 100 (50 Brinjal +50 Bottle gourd) farmers were selected randomly as well as interviewed for collecting information through one set of questionnaires. The result revealed that bottle gourd and brinjal farmers were not perfectly efficient in Bangladesh. The mean efficiency of bottle gourd and brinjal observed 0.79 and 0.81, respectively. According to mean efficiency, farmers can be efficient in bottle gourd and brinjal farming through increasing 21 % and 19 % output, respectively with on-hand resources and technologies. Tobit model suggests that the education level of farmer, training program, choosing high yielding variety and the size of the farm have an effect on farmers’ efficiency positively and significantly. In addition, we observed that human labor cost, seed cost, irrigation cost, fertilizers cost, and pesticides and insecticides cost have a significant positive impact on bottle gourd and brinjal production. Key word: Technical efficiency, brinjal, bottle gourd, agriculture, farmer. Journal Appl Journal of Applied Horticulture ISSN: 0972-1045