Analysis of technical and economic efficiency of potato production in Afyonkarahisar province

This study aims to determine the technical and economic efficiency of potato production enterprises and develop proposals to increase their efficiency by determining the factors that cause inefficiency. Afyonkarahisar province, one of the significant potato production centres in Turkey, was opted for this examination. The data constitute from the statistics obtained from 79 enterprises selected through the stratified random sampling method. "Data Envelopment Analysis" (DEA) and "Stochastic Frontier Analysis" (SFA) techniques were utilised to estimate farm-level efficiency values, and the factors affecting the efficiency of potato production were determined by "Tobit Regression Analysis" and "A Model for Technical Inefficiency" methods. The variables used in the analysis of efficiency models are potato yield, labour, machine operating time, electricity, pure nitrogen, pure phosphorus, and seed usage levels. The results estimated the average technical efficiency value at 0.690 and 0.764, and the economic efficiency value was 0.292, meaning that the estimated first figures were higher than the second figure. This is because the production was not carried out with an optimal input composition, considering the input quantities and their prices. The potato area and plot numbers that cause inefficiency were found statistically significant. The potato production cost and GPV per decare were calculated as 3521.53 TRY and 3556.06 TRY, respectively, and the relative profit was 1.01. Furthermore, it was assessed the average production cost at 0.96 TRY for 1 kg potato. In potato cultivation, which is low-efficiency and high-cost, it should be established education activities for producers to select the optimum input composition. Key Words: Data Envelopment Analysis, Stochastic Frontier Analysis, A Tobit Regression Analysis, Efficiency Analysis, Production costs, Potato