Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Sources of
agricultural
information e
Number of sources
2.11
0.97
Training
Dummy (1 = received training on wheat
production in the past 5 years, 0 = No)
0.14
0.35
Wheat area
Amount of land under wheat
0.13
0.06
Total number of
observations
293
Note: a = figures are based on farmer's own account of his/her crop loss due to each specific factors.
b = wheat cultivation is very sensitive to sowing date. The optimum time of planting is November 15 -
30 th . Failure to sow wheat by November 30 th reduces crop yield by an estimated 1.3% per day.
c = to ensure optimum production of wheat, three operations need to be done simultaneously in the first
spell. These are, applying first irrigation, first weeding and first top-dressing of urea fertilizer, all
within 17 - 21 days after sowing.
d = information was collected on the nature of extension link: 0 = no link, 1 = weekly contact, 2 =
fortnightly, 3 = monthly, 4 = quarterly. The information was then converted into frequencies in one
year using: quarterly = 4 times, monthly = 12 times, fortnightly = 24 times (deducted two weeks to
account for official holidays), and weekly = 42 times (deducted 10 weeks to account for official
holidays and other missing days).
e = figures are number of sources that the farmers reported as his/her sources of information. A total of
six sources were recorded. These are: electronic media (radio/television), block supervisor (lowest
unit of extension service), NGO, neighbours, printed media (e.g., leaflets), and fertilizer/pesticide
dealer.
Source: Adopted from Rahman and Hasan (2008).
4. R ESULTS
From the information provided in Table 2, we can see that the average farm size is very
small (0.13 ha). Land type is in the suitable range whereas soil type is of average quality.
Variables representing environmental production conditions are non-zero (p<0.01). The
average age of the farmers is 47 years with 16 years of experience in growing wheat,
education is less than five years, 61% of the farmers used mechanical power services,
extension link is relatively high (13.4 times in a year), farmers are exposed to at least two
sources of agricultural information, and only 14% of the farmers received training on wheat
production in the past 5 years.
Productivity Effects of Environmental Production Conditions
The assumption underlying the inclusion of environmental production conditions in
estimating the parameters of the production frontier is that they are exogenously determined.
Furthermore, if these variables are asymmetrically distributed, then their omission will lead to
upward bias in the estimates of firm specific technical inefficiency, which was shown by
Sherlund et al., (2002) and Rahman and Hasan (2008) for Cote d'Ivoire and Bangladesh,
respectively. The suite of variables chosen to control for environmental production conditions
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