Technical efficiency of wheat and paddy farms in irrigated saline environment in Haryana State, India: An assessment

The farmers in certain areas of Western Yamuna Canal Command in Haryana State, India, face problems of water logging and salinity in the absence of adequate drainage; and sustainability of their farm operations is highly vulnerable due to fluctuations in rainfall. A study was undertaken to analyse the farm specific production processes and productivity in paddy and wheat farms and find out effect of socio-economic factors under the control of farmers to achieve the maximum output in adverse circumstances. A stochastic frontier production function incorporating a model for technical inefficiency was estimated. The results indicated that farmers combat the adverse situation by incurring higher expenses, in case of paddy, on transplanting operations, seed material and capital input and, in case of wheat cultivation, on fertilizer, irrigation and capital input. However, production function coefficients associated with number of ploughing and plant protection cost, in case of wheat, and seed and fertilizer cost, in case of paddy, were found to be negative indicating their overuse in cultivation. The inefficiency model further indicated that technical inefficiency tend to decline with increase in family size and access to both canal and tube-well water for irrigation in both wheat and paddy cultivation. The mean technical efficiency was found to be 0.84 in case of wheat and 0.93 in paddy. It indicated that there was a scope to increase productivity in wheat with the existing level of technology by improving the technical efficiency of the inputs used while productivity in paddy do not have much scope to increase through improvement of technical efficiency of inputs alone.