ASSESSING THE TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN POTATO PRODUCTION IN IRAN

In this paper, the energy requirements of inputs and outputs for potato production were examined. Also in this research, a nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique was used to determine the efficiencies of farmers with regard to energy use in potato production activities in Iran. The results indicated that total input energy, total output energy, and energy ratio were 107,674 MJ/ha, 82,463 MJ/ha, and 0.77, respectively. Net energy was negative. Therefore, it can be concluded that in potato production, energy is being lost. The study has helped to segregate efficient farmers from inefficient ones, to identify wasteful uses of energy from different sources by inefficient farmers, and to suggest reasonable savings in energy uses from different sources. DEA optimizes the performance measure of each potato production farm or decision-making unit (DMU). The average values (for all 44 farmers considered) of pure technical efficiency (TE), TE, and scale efficiency were found to be 0.92, 0.74, and 0.81, respectively. On an average, about 36.79% of the total input energy could be saved without reducing the yield from its present level by adopting the recommendations based on the present study.