STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS FOR MEASURING TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF NEEM COATED UREA : EVIDENCE FROM NORTH INDIA

This study1 depicts level of efficiencies of the techiniques applied by mustard farmers after implication of Neem Coated Urea (NCU) in different agro-climatic zones of Punjab and Haryana (North-Western) States of India. The Stochastic Frontier Model (with half-normal distribution) under ad-hoc truncation was used to estimate the Technical Efficiency (T.E.) The Propensity of Yield under Score Match method (PYSM) was applied to trace the role of treated NCU and other type of Urea (NCU-NT) or Farm Yard Manure (FYM). A total of 300 farmers, comprising 150 users of NCU and remaining were using other Urea, randomly selected from six districts of the studied zones. Farm-size, seeds, types of fertilizer and irrigation had significantly positive effect, labor and pesticides had insignificant negative effect on mustard yield. Farmers who used NCU were found more technically efficient than who used Urea. The T.E. level of users of NCU was found 0.228 means about 22.8 per cent and for Urea (NCU-NT) it was found 0.181 means 18.1 per cent both were at 10 per cent statistical significance level for the PYSM for mustard crops. This means farmers who are using Urea is less efficient by 4.7 per cent than those who are using NCU. A significant difference of about 16 per cent in T.E. was observed in mean estimates of technical efficiencies for NCU and Urea, which were about 64 per cent and 48 per cent respectively, under stochastic measures with an inverse count of probability weights for mustard yield. This gap in T.E. is held responsible for a significant effect on farmers income. Therefore, this study has a clear recommendation that awareness to use NCU among mustard growers should be encouraged