The Influence of Technical Efficiency and Weather Risk on Crop Production in Russian Agriculture

Abstract

Over the last years due to macroeconomic and domestic policy factors in Russian agriculture and in plant growing in particular, there have been significant changes resulting in expansion of production and increased efficiency in productive capacity use. The issue of influence power of factors of the agricultural producers efficiency remains open; and the factors related to technical efficiency are of the outstanding interest. However, under determining influence of the weather factor on the crop production output it is necessary to differentiate between the influence of weather risk and technical efficiency changes. The Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) was applied by researchers at different times for technical efficiency evaluating of agricultural production in Russia at the level of regions and at the farm level. However, these studies were conducted for the transition period of the Russian economy in the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as for the post-crisis period of 2008-2012. Therefore, the analysis of trends developed over the recent years is of scientific and practical interest. This paper introduces the research findings in technical efficiency of agricultural producers with its key factors detecting for the period of 2011-2017, using SFA with variables reflecting the weather risk. The technical efficiency of agricultural producers in Saratov region, specializing in grain, was chosen as a research target due to their high share in the total number of farm units. According to the specified feature, 396 farms were included into sampling, the activity analysis of which was carried out for the period of 2011-2017.