WHEAT IN BANGLADESH: YIELD GROWTH, PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE AND DETERMINANTS - Soybean and Wheat Crops: Growth, Fertilization, and Yield - page 207

2. H ISTORY OF W HEAT D EVELOPMENT IN B ANGLADESH

Since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, serious food deficits necessitated food
imports in large quantities, primarily wheat from the international markets. The growing
dependence on wheat imports during the 1970s brought about a gradual change in dietary
habits, and as a result, wheat became a cereal supplement to rice (Begum, 1998). Although
wheat is a crop suited to temperate climate, the ecological conditions in Bangladesh are
favourable with potential for its production during winter months, provided that disease-
resistant and early maturing high yielding varieties of wheat could be developed (CIMMYT,
1982). The introduction of HYVs and the adoption of technologies for better management and
seed preservation, generated through research in the mid 1970s, helped Bangladesh to become
a wheat growing country. The government supported the initiative by facilitating the creation
of a Wheat Research Centre (WRC) within the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute
(BARI). Thus far, the centre has developed and disseminated 24 high yielding wheat varieties
(Appendix A1). Balaka was the first variety selected using germplasm and technical
assistance from CIMMYT and was released in 1979. However, Kanchan , released in 1983,
has become the most popular variety which is still grown today. As mentioned earlier, wheat
cultivation in Bangladesh is composed of 100% HYVs, with varieties released during the
1980s and 1990s being the most popular amongst the farmers.

3. R ESEARCH M ETHODOLOGY

Analytical Framework

The stochastic production frontier approach, developed by Aigner et al., (1977), is
utilized in this study. We extend the framework and include variables representing
environmental production conditions in addition to physical inputs to explain productivity
performance following Sherlund et al, (2002) and Rahman and Hasan (2008). The stochastic
production frontier for the i th farmer is written as:

Y = f ( X , W ) − u + v ,

(1)

i i i i i

where Y i is the output, X i is the vector of physical inputs, W i is the vector of relevant
environmental variables that control production conditions, v i is assumed to be independently
and identically distributed N (0,σ 2 v ) two sided random error, independent of the u i ; and the u i
is a non-negative random variable

i u associated with inefficiency in production which
is assumed to be independently distributed as truncation at zero of the normal distribution
with mean - Z i δ , and variance σ u 2 (| N (-Z i δ , σ 2 u |), where Z i are the correlates of inefficiencies
on farm i . In this formulation, output is assumed to be strictly monotonically increasing in
both physical inputs as well as environmental conditions. Omissions of environmental
variables biases the estimates of the parameters of the production function, overstates the
level of technical inefficiency, as well as biases the correlates of inefficiency (Sherlund et al.,
2002).

( ≥ 0 ),