Factors Affecting Maize Productivity of Credit Owner Farmers of Zarai Taraqiathi Bank Limited in Rural Area of District Mardan-Pakistan

Abstract

Maize is the staple food of District Mardan and majority people used for their livestock as a fodder. The major objective of the study was, to analyze the factors, which affect maize production of ZTBL Credit Owner Farmers, in District Mardan. It consists of three tehsil namely Mardan, Katlang and Thakhth Bai. Total 226 credit owner farmers of the ZTBL were selected for the study and data were collected with the help of interview schedule from the respondents and used Cob Douglass Production Function and Quintile Regression Function for analysis. According to finding Un-standardized coefficients of the constant is 1.501 and found significant at .05 level, while land, plough, seeds, fertilizer, weedicides, labor days, irrigation and credit coefficients were estimated -.021,-.002, 0.018, 0.037, 0.080, 0.099,.798 and .017 respectively. The weedicides, labor days and irrigation were found significant but the remaining were found non-significant at .05 level. The land and plough relationship with Yield were found negative, while the other variables relationship were found positive with the yield, which shows that on the average, if one per cent increase in inputs of each of the land, plough, seeds, fertilizer, weedicides, labor days, irrigation and credit will be applied, then, -0.02, -0.002, 0.018, 0.037, 0.080, 0.099, 0.798 and 0.017 percent change will be occurred respectively in the yield of maize. The model over whole was found significant. The model is considered best fit and indicates 83% explanatory variation in the model. The total output elasticity was estimated 1.026, which shows increasing return scale of the model and shows that when one unit input of the all variables were applied for output gaining, then 1.026 units output will be produced by these inputs, which indicates that the output is greater than the input and shows the increasing return scale. According to Nonparametric Quintile Regression the constant value coefficient was 6.57, while land, plough, seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, labor days, irrigation and credit coefficients were found -.017, .008 ,.031,-.032,- .036, .891 and -.002 respectively. Only seeds and irrigation coefficients were found significant at .05 level, while the remaining variables coefficients were found non-significant in the finding. In this model land, fertilizer and credit relation was found negative, while the remaining were found positive. The main reason is the low credit facility to the farmers to solve the problems of all inputs. The R² value was found 0.335, which explain 33.5% variation in the model. The model is not considered good fit, because it is below 60% level.  The value of total elasticity of output was 0.89, which shows decreasing return in scale. If one percent investment increase occurs in the inputs of all the variables then 0.89 percent change will be occurred in the total productivity of the maize in the study area. In some cases the relation between the inputs and output is negative and non significant while in the real sense it is not possible however some climatic factors also affect the production negatively which affect the output negatively.  There the output value is less than the input values and the return is considered in decreasing return. On the basis of finding the study concludes that without these factor applications, the high productivity of maize is impossible while the study area farmers are very poor, so they do not afford the cost of the inputs, so it is recommended that all factors play key role in the enhancement of maize productivity and the study analyzed that credit availability to farmer is less than the requirement of the farmers which instead of benefits give the loss to the farmers and latter on the farmers not capable to return the said loan to the bank in time and sell land for payment to the bank, so it is recommended that  government should increase the credit facility on low interest rate according to farmers requirement while also efficient monitoring system by bank is requested for enhancing maize productivity in the study area.

Keywords:-Analysis, Affecting, Credit Owner Farmers, Factors, , Maize Production, Rural Area of District Mardan

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-5-07

Publication date:March 31^st 2019