Exploring the geographical heterogeneity in production efficiency and technology gap of farms producing apple

The factors that cause the resources allocated to apple production not to be used effectively and the regional distribution of these factors are among the research questions still waiting to be answered. In order to reduce this information gap, in this study, in Isparta and Karaman provinces, where an important place in Turkey apple production, the annual economic activity results of apple farms were evaluated, their efficiencies were determined and compared according to the regional level and farm sizes. Data obtained from 132 farms selected with the stratified random sampling method constituted the main material of the study. Classical economic analysis approaches have been used to determine the capital structure and annual activity results of the farms. The Stochastic Metafrontier approach has been used to compare the efficiencies. The financial and economic profitability rates of the farms were 8.82% and 7.25% in Isparta province, respectively, while it was 7.78% and 6.15% in Karaman province. The stochastic frontier analysis results showed that the farms in Isparta were 78% and the farms in Karaman province were 81.1% efficient. Stochastic metafrontier results laid out that the metatechnology ratio (MTR) is 84.5% in Isparta province and 73.5% in Karaman province, and this rate varies depending on the size of the farms. MTR results revealed that the production frontier of apple farms in Isparta province is closer to metafrontier. To increase farms' efficiency, it is necessary to pay attention to producer training, scientific studies, extension and infrastructure studies, and keep the researcher-extension workers-farmers relations strong.