Agriculture Economics and Research

The study was conducted to estimate the technical efficiency of farmers in garlic production in district Swabi of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Data was randomly collected from 110 farmers by use of multistage sampling technique. Maximum likelihood estimation technique was used to estimate Cob-Douglas frontier production function. The analysis revealed that the estimated mean technical efficiency was 77 percent indicating that total output can be further increased with efficient use of resources and technology. The estimated gamma value was found to be 0.93 which shows 93% variation in garlic output due to inefficiency factors. The analysis further revealed that seed rate, tractor hours, fertilizer, FYM and weedicides were positive and statistically significant production factors. The results also show that age and education were statistically significant inefficieny factors, age having positive and education having negative relationship with the output of garlic. This study suggests that in order to increase the production of garlic by taking advantage of their high efficiency level, the government should invest in the research and development aspects.