Measuring Technical Efficiency and Determining the Factors Affecting the Inefficiency of Wheat Farmers in Iraq (Diyala Governorate as an Applied Model) for the Season 2021

Abstract

The study aimed to estimate the technical efficiency and the factors affecting the inefficiency of wheat production farms. The Pareto curve was used to determine the importance of the problems facing farmers in the production process ‘the actual and potential production and the number of production losses in the study area were also calculated. A random sample of 100 wheat farmers was taken in Diyala Governorate including five districts The Stochastic Frontier Analysis was estimated using the Maximum Likelihood method. The results indicated that wheat production in Diyala Governorate is affected by the explanatory variables (seeds, compound fertilizers, urea fertilizers, pesticides, mechanical work, and human work). The total elasticity of the productive factors was 0.845, which implies that the farmers carry out their agricultural operations when there is a decreasing return to scale. The value of γ was 84%, which means that about 84% of the variances in inefficiency were due to factors under the control of the farmers. The technical efficiency ranged between (77.41 – 86.91%). The total actual production was 2,3049.955 tons, while the potential production was 2,754.865 tons. Thus, the production loss was 2744.865 tons. It can be concluded that farmers use resources in a different way and that they work in nonhomogeneous conditions. The study recommends following scientific methods in farm management and redistributing the economic resources to ensure the achievement of the same level of production or higher in light of reducing costs