Effect of Different Crop Management System on Technical Efficiency in Sugarcane Production in Faisalabad, Punjab Region of Pakistan

Abstract

Sugarcane plays an important role in the economic sustainability of the sugarcane growers. The high return of it attracts the farm scale to devote a part of land to sugarcane relatively to their land holdings and economic returns differs associated with crop management type such as ratoon, fresh and mixed. Therefore, the study examined the technical efficiency level of small, medium and large farmers under different crop management system as fresh, ratoon and mixed crop system. The bulk of the data were collected from randomly selected 100 sugarcane growers by using face to face interview. Cluster analysis was performed to select similar growers in terms of manager’s profile, profitability and land ownership for small, medium and large farmers. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to calculate the efficiency scores such as technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and economic efficiency. Research results showed that the education level of the large farmers was satisfactory level comparing to others. Most small farmers were illiterate. The difference among the farm size in terms of the variables of age of respondents, sugarcane experience and family members were statistically significant at the 5% probability level. The high acreages of land holdings enabled the farmers to devote the huge area to sugarcane crops. The acreages at large farms were significantly high and also keep their more acres of land under sugarcane crop by 6.49 acres out of 13.66 acres. Based on the results of efficiency analysis, the main sources of economic inefficiency was allocative efficiency in the research area, indicating that monitoring input prices in market was critical for the sample farmers. Comparative analysis showed that mixed cropping system was the worst management system in terms of efficiency scores. Farmers would increase their economic efficiency if they improved their skills through participating the extension and training programs and by monitoring the input market conditions when allocated their factors harmonious with factor prices.

Keywords: Efficiency scores, Sugarcane, Farm scale, Faisalabad, Management system