Analysis of Technical Efficiency of Rice Farmers under Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh

The study investigated the Technical efficiency (TE) of rice farmers under Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) from a sample size of 40 farmers. The results from DEA and SFA revealed that the mean TE of rice farmers was 98.7 per cent and 86 per cent respectively. The mean TE from DEA is indicating that they can reduce their input by 1.3 per cent to produce the same level of output and SFA revealed that the coefficients of seed (0.7543), urea (0.877), MOP (0.979) and machine hours (0.877) were positive and highly significant, implying that these inputs are productive enough whereas DAP (0.877), PPC (0.765) and human labour (0.988) were positive but non-significant implying that they are comparatively less productive. From the results of DEA and SFA, the mean efficiency of rice farmers through DEA (0.98) was more than SFA (0.86). The results from Garrett ranking revealed that price versatility, high input prices, lack of proper labour supply, lack of adequate capital and storage facilities etc., are the major constraints faced by rice farmers under FPO in Guntur district and they need to be strengthened.