Technical Efficiency of Sunflower Production in Trakya Region by DEA

The objective of this paper is to determine how efficiently the resources are used in sunflower production in Turkey. The data used in efficiency measurements covers the provinces Tekirdag, Kirklareli and Edirne in Trakya region which is the most important area of sunflower seed production. The production area of sunflower is about 307 thousand hectares, 57% of total sunflower sown area in Turkey and the amount of production is 498 thousand metric tons, 62% of the total sunflower production. 197 farmers were interviewed face to face to obtain the data. Efficiency measurements are made by means of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with respect to constant return to scale for each province. The Efficiency scores is decomposed into pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency for getting more information from the measurements. Total sunflower production (kg) is used as the output and land (decar); labour (hour), tractor use (hour), nitrogen fertilizer use (kg), seed use (kg) and pesticide (kg) are considered as the main inputs. Average technical efficiency score covering all the provinces is estimated as 0.672. Although none of the provinces produces sunflower efficiently, Tekirdag province is relatively more successful in input use. Tekirdag province has the highest pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency score. Considering all the regions, the reason for inefficiency is not optimal production but not producing a certain output with minimum input. Yield is a factor that increases efficiency.