Abstract:
The objectives of this study are to estimate the technical efficiency and its determinants of
paddy farmers in Kurunegala district. 120 sampled farmers were selected from three villages
during the last Maha season in 2019/2020. Translog frontier production function is applied to
identify the impact of each input on paddy production and its results showed that log forms of
the inputs such as land size, chemical costs, seed costs, expenditure on machinery, labor
squared, interactions between land and chemicals, land and seed, labor and seed, fertilizer and
chemical, fertilizer and seed were significantly affected on paddy production in the model.
Empirical findings of the technical efficiencies indicated that, its mean value was 84% with a
wide range from 27% to 99%. It suggested that farmers in the study area still have the room to
improve their farming efficiency by 16% from its present level and this variation has arisen
from differences in demographic characteristics and farm management practices rather than
random variability. An inefficiency effect model was estimated by the maximum likelihood
method which shows that male farmers are more efficient than females in the sample. Further,
family size, income from farming, availability of non- farm income and farming experience
were negatively related to technical inefficiency which means that, they were found to be
significantly contributing to the variation in farm specific technical efficiency. Based on the
results, the study recommended that agricultural extension officers should organize to
exchange the farm experiences between male and female farmers, and promote them by
providing additional income facilities to improve the efficiency in paddy farming and farmers’
income in future.
