Measurement the Producting Efficiency and Marketing Efficiency of Okra Crop (Covered) in Baghdad Governorate for the Season 2022

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of the research is to estimate the production and marketing efficiency of okra under the protected agriculture system and to identify the most important production and marketing problems.
 
 Theoretical Framework: The least squares method OLS was used to estimate the parameters of the short-term
 cost function using the statistical program SSPS, and the short-term cubic cost function was adopted.
 
 Design/Methodology: Data were collected through a questionnaire form for a random sample of 62 farmers of the covered okra crop in Baghdad Governorate (Mahmoudiya District) for the season 2022-2023, to measure the production and marketing efficiency of okra under the protected agriculture system.
 
 Findings: There is economic efficiency in the production of okra, the ratio of return to costs is greater than one, while the production costs function indicated that the crop does not achieve the required level of efficiency, as the optimal volume of production was about 12.22 tons. the average production volume of the selected sample was about 4.3 tons, and the estimated results also indicated that the total cost about 23350570 ID, and the marketing efficiency of the crop about 85%.
 
 Practical and Social Effects: The study benefits okra farmers through knowledge of the optimal use of available resources, i.e. the production of the largest amount of goods and services using the elements of production available, exploiting the resources available to it to produce goods and services that specialize in its production, farmers achieve marketing efficiency through maximizing the ratio between outputs and inputs.
 
 Value or Origin: The agricultural sector in Iraq is of great importance among other economic sectors. Meanwhile, it faces many challenges, including population increase, limited land and water resources, inefficient use of available resources, and lack of the seasonality of agricultural production coincides with the periods required for consumption, which makes the transition to protected agriculture necessary to increase agricultural production as one of the means of agricultural intensification to increase agricultural production to meet the increased demand for crops. Therefore., studying marketing efficiency is one of the important studies, as it is the main factor for continuing to deal in the production and of any crop or not.