Determination of Farm level Technical Efficiency and Yield Gap of Paddy Production in Andhra Pradesh, India: An Empirical Approach

This chapter evaluates the farm level technical efficiency and yield gap of paddy production in Andhra Pradesh, India. Farm efficiency is a broad area, which can be examined by comparing the economic efficiencies of various types of farm groups (small, medium and large), or farming systems (irrigated and non-irrigated) or ecological zones. The study used the latest available data for the year 2016-17 with an objective to calculate the technical efficiency and yield gap. For calculating technical efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis technique was employed.

The secondary data set contained 541 paddy producing farms/units across Andhra Pradesh state under five agro climatic zones viz North coastal, Godavari, Krishna, Southern and Scarce rainfall zones was studied. The results showed that the overall technical efficiency of the entire sample is 86.8 per cent inferring that about 13 per cent of the potential paddy yield is lost because of technical inefficiency in Andhra Pradesh. The level of technical efficiency is directly related to the agro climatic zones of Andhra Pradesh. Among different agro climatic zones technical efficiency is found highest in Godavari zone with 0.883 and found lowest in scarce rainfall zone (0.808). Technical efficiency varies according to farm size. It shows the marginal farmers are slightly more technical efficient than semi-medium and medium farmers. The technical efficiency varies according to farm size .Farm-size wise technical efficiency of paddy in Andhra Pradesh. The marginal farms are found to be slightly more technically efficient than semi-medium and medium farms. The yield gap was found to be 981.10 kg/ha in Godavari zone and a minimum yield gap of 335 kg/ha in North coastal zone with an average yield gap of 663 kg/ha for Andhra Pradesh indicating domestic paddy production could be significantly increased only by improving farmers practices with the current amount of resource they are using. In order to increase technical efficiency, capacity building on the use of relevant scientific information to capture the highest potential resource use efficiency with less cost, creative ways to cut waste, and dissemination of all relevant farm knowledge material should be encouraged.