Can Farm Sustainability Translate into Efficiency as Well? A Technical Efficiency Analysis of Relay Cropping System in Saurashtra, Gujarat

Exploiting the potential of current technologies is more critical to increase farm production than that of waiting for a new technological breakthrough. In reality, higher efficiency can often translate into higher productivity which further may lead to sustainability at the farm levels. Taking this into consideration, the present study was conducted in Saurashtara region of Gujarat state during 2016-17 to determine technical efficiency levels of randomly selected farmers practicing groundnut-pigeonpea relay cropping vis-à-vis other cropping systems. The analysis was conducted using stochastic frontier production function (SFPF) approach. The findings revealed that the mean technical efficiency of relay cropping farmers (89 %) was higher than that of sole pigeonpea farmers (87.18 %) and sole groundnut farmers (74.52 %). The maximum likelihood estimates (MLE) revealed positively significant effect of human labour (1.103) and machine power (0.109) and fertilizer (0.276) on farm output among relay cropping farmers. In fact, the variance ratios viz. σ2 (0.027), γ (0.838) and λ (2.263) were found to be significant indicating that the variations in the farm output were more due to the existence of technical inefficiency levels. In addition, the average frontier yield to be bridged was only 0.89 qtl/ha under relay cropping which was much lesser than the other two cropping systems. Among the factors influencing the technical efficiency of relay cropping farmers, experience (0.37); education (0.10); institutional support (0.12) and imput market access (0.08) were found to be both positive and significant