The determinants of technical efficiency in beekeeping farms and the role of agricultural subsidies: the case of Nigde, Turkey

This paper examines the association between agricultural subsidies and farm efficiency using stochastic frontier analysis on beekeeping farming. Turkey has huge honey production potential. However, traditional production mode negatively affects the total production and productivity. In this study, it was used primary data from 54 producers in Nigde province in 2017. Producers were selected through stratified sampling method. According to results, the mean technical efficiency of the beekeeping farms is 0.43. The beekeepers were found to be generally fairly inefficient. The most important factors, which determine technical inefficiency, are agricultural subsidies, major occupation for beekeeping, full frame numbers with honey per hive, pure race of bee, type of beekeeping farming and hive numbers. The result reveals that the government subsidy scheme had a net negative impact on the technical efficiency of beekeeping farm. This is the ?rst time that such an impact assessment of government subsidies on technical efficiency in the beekeeping farming has been carried out in Turkey. For this reason, it is expected that the results will be useful both for scientists and policy decision makers in agriculture and rural development