Estimation of Technical Efficiency (TE) for Watermelon Crop in Karma District Using Stochastic Frontier Approach

Abstract

Agricultural production, in both parts of the plant and animal, is the main nerve of the national economy, as the economics of plant production is an important tributary to achieving the economic surplus that the world seeks, regardless of the different systems and inputs to achieve economic growth. Targeting the research: Estimating Technical Efficiency for Watermelon in Anbar province, Karma district, the random sample consisting of (67) farmers of the study population of 381 farmers for the productive year 2020, the results of estimating technical efficiency using the method of random boundaries analysis and using the trans-logarithmic function (Trans Loge), The average efficiency is about 81%, so it is required that these farms use only 81% or less of the inputs to produce the same quantity or more of the cereal crop in order to be described as technically efficient. It gave a modest estimate for the intercept part B0, as it reached a value of 8.95 it is less than the estimated values according to the corrected least squares method (COLS) and the method of Maximum Likelihood (ML), as it reached 9.12, 9.24. The estimations of the function parameters by the OLS showed a positive relationship between the quantity of the crop produced and the inputs (Seeds, pesticides, size of holding) while the relationship was negative with inputs (labor, fertilizer).