Exploring Economic Efficiency of Pineapple Production at Madhupur Upazila of Tangail District, Bangladesh

The study was conducted to estimate the economic efficiency of pineapple production at Madhupur upazila of Tangail district in Bangladesh. Considering the 2016-2017 cropping season, data were collected through structured questionnaire administered on 100 pineapple farmers using multistage sampling technique and analyzed using descriptive statistics and translog stochastic cost frontier approach. The mean economic efficiency was estimated as 82.61% across the study area which means that farmers were not operating on the cost frontier (100% efficient). So, the results indicate that there is still an opportunity for pineapple farmers to minimize cost without compromising yield with present technologies available in the hands of farmers. The study reveals that age and micro credit had significant positive but extension contact had significant negative influence on economic inefficiency. The significant positive coefficient of age and access to credit indicate that economic inefficiencies are significantly lower for the younger farmers compared to old aged group and farmers with access to credit tend to exhibit lower levels of efficiency. The negative influence of extension contact implies that economic inefficiency will be reduced significantly by enhancing extension contact. It can be concluded that there was economic inefficiency in pineapple production in the study area despite high levels of economic efficiencies among the studied farmers. It is recommended that policies should be implemented for providing a favourable environment to encourage more youth to engage in pineapple production in a bid to increase efficiency. Concerned authority should need to monitor beneficiaries of credits to reduce the misapplication of credit money by the farmers. Extension agents have to improve the frequency of contact with the farmers for appropriate input allocation and cost minimization to enhance efficiency in pineapple production.