Abstract

The present study aims at measuring the technical efficiency of wheat production under changing climate in drought prone areas of Bangladesh. The study employed farm level cross sectional data taken from 100 farmers using purposive random sampling technique from three upazilas of Thakurgoan district of Bangladesh. The study considered two successive years 2006 and 2007 as drought and normal year respectively on the basis of farmers’ opinion and information collected from meteorological station. Semi-logarithmic regression model with dummy variable was used to estimate production variability of wheat due to drought. The findings showed that wheat production decreased by 17.4 percent on an average due to drought occurrence in the study areas. Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production function was used to determine the technical efficiency of the wheat growers and the factors which influence technical efficiency in wheat production. The empirical results of technical efficiency model showed that the effects of seed, pesticide, tillage, irrigation and fertilizer costs were significant in the production of wheat. Education, family size, farming experience, credit, extension- contact and farm size had negative effects on technical inefficiency of farmers which indicates that technical inefficiency decreases with the increase of these factors in both normal and drought years. The mean technical efficiencies were 67.00 and 86.40 percent in normal and drought years respectively. The results also indicate a good potential for increasing wheat production by 33 and 14 percent in normal and drought years respectively using the available resources and technology. Wheat farmers should give more attention to their farming practices and should take rationale decision for using farm resources efficiently.

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