Technical efficiency and food security of cucumber farmers in Phulpur upazila of Bangladesh

Low productivity of cucumber is mostly due to the inability of the farmers to utilize the available technologies fully, resulting in lower efficiencies of production. Profitability and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) are used to estimate profitability and technical efficiency and "Modified" OECD scale is used to measure calorie intake level of the 60 cucumber farming households from Sorchapur and Nakagau villages under Phulpur upazila of Mymensingh district. The study has indicated that cucumber cultivation is profitable agribusiness, but many of the cucumber farms have shown technical inefficiency problems. The socioeconomic analysis showed that 50% of the respondents were aged between 30-45 years, 55% households have medium family size, 60% of the respondents were illiterate and 71.67% respondent's primary occupation was agriculture. The average cucumber cultivated area was 50.18 decimal. The profitability analysis showed that the average per hectare per season yield was Kg. 45290, total cost of production was estimated Tk. 509847; while the gross margin and net return were Tk. 231877 and Tk. 169503, respectively. The study also showed that on an average, the mean technical efficiency of cucumber was 0.7367 represented that 26.33 % inefficiency existed in the study area. About 11.67% of the sample households was consumed an average 1539.24 k.cal/person/day, that indicated they were ultra poor (