PROFITABILITY AND TECHNIAL EFFICIENCY OF ONION CULTIVATION IN SOME SELECTED AREAS OF PABNA DISTRICT IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

The present study was designed to measure the profitability and technical efficiency of Onion farmers in selected areas of two area in Sadar Upazila and Sujanagar Upazila under Pabna District. Primary data were collected from randomly selected 100 farmers in study area form selected village. Both tabular and functional analyses were applied in this study. The major findings of the study reveal that Onion production is profitable. Total cost of production was Tk. 216352.58 per hectare. Gross returns was Tk. 413808 per hectare and Net returns was Tk. 197455.42 per hectare. Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) was found to be 1.91 which implies that one taka investment in Onion production generated Tk. 1.91. The Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production function was used for this study to measure technical efficiency of Onion farmers. The coefficients of parameters like deviation of a farmer from the best-practice frontier. The regression coefficients of Human labor, Seed, Urea, TSP, MoP, DAP, Zinc and Irrigation were positive but the coefficient of Magnesium and Irrigation was negative. Where human labour was found positive and significance at 5 percent level of significant and urea was significance at 1 percent level of significant. In the technical inefficiency effect model years of education, credit service, experience, member of social organization and training have expected (negative) coefficients. Coefficients indicating that this helps in reducing technical inefficiency of Onion farmers. The study revealed that a considerable improvement took place to increase household income of the farmers in the study area and to improve the socioeconomic conditions with the introduction of large-scale commercial Onion production. The study also identified some problems and constraints faced by the Onion farmers and suggested some recommendations to improve and would possible be increased.