Abstract
Despite being the leading apple producing province of Pakistan and well known for its unique taste and quality of apple, yet the farmers of Balochistan have always been correlated with low socioeconomic indicators because of low productivity and profitability. Such support would not be effective unless farmers’ managerial skills are improved. Keeping in view the potential of apple production in the province and the importance and need of efficiency analysis, this study estimates cost efficiency (CE) of apple production at exclusively farmers’ conditions using data collected through a multistage random survey of 181 officially designated small farmers in Mastung district in Balochistan. An input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology was employed to evaluate cost efficiency. The results elucidated that average cost efficiency of surveyed farms was 65.4% and cost efficiencies of large farms were significantly higher than that of medium and small farms. Among 172 cost-inefficient growers, their mean CE score was 65.6% for Katja and 60.8% for Red-delicious varieties, indicating that there is still ample scope for inefficient farmers to reduce cost on input-use by 34.4% and 39.2% in the said varieties, respectively, without compromising the given yield level just by using optimal input-mix following practices of their efficient counterparts. Maximum contributions to total savings were from labor, farm yard manure (FYM) and urea. An improved understanding of inefficiency can help farmers allocate resources more wisely and assist policy makers in designing agricultural programs to reach least cost goals.
Dr. Ghulam Murtaza1. (2019) Are Small-scale Apple growers in Balochistan Cost Efficient? Empirical Evidence Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Balochistan Review, Volume 2, Issue 2.
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