Technical efficiency of rice cultivation in West Bengal: An economic analysis

The results of regression analysis indicated that the seed, plant protection, human labour, electric motor and diesel engine applied were statistically significant and had positive regression coefficients which meant that at current level these were underutilized. The variance parameters, Sigma square and Gamma, for the three categories of farms were significantly different from zero and had positive coefficients and statistically significant at one per cent level. This provides statistical confirmation that there were differences in the technical efficiency among farmers. Thus, the shortfall of realized productivity from the frontier was largely due to technical efficiency and was mainly within the control of individual farmer. However, a relative higher value of Gamma for medium farms indicated that dominance of efficiency effect over random error was much stronger for medium farms as compared to small and large farms. The issue of irrational use of some of the resources, particularly nitrogen, phosphorus, machine use and micro-nutrients in rice cultivation needs to be addressed seriously.