Evaluation of Technical, Allocative and Economic Efficiency of Dairy Cattle Breeding Units in Moghan Agro-Industry with the Approach of Data Envelopment Analysis and Tobit Regression

Efficiency is one of the most important factors in productivity growth, especially in agriculture. The purpose of this study was to measure the technical, allocative  and economic efficiency and to identify the factors affecting them in dairy cattle stations of Moghan agro-industry company. The data of this research were gathered in 2017 by documentary study, observation and interview. In this research, Deap 2.1 and Eviews 10 software were used for analyzing performance calculations and determining effective factors, respectively. In order to design a data envelopment analysis model, the main variables used in the research included the herd size per head, feed and concentrate in kilograms, manpower in terms of man-days, hygiene per day, milk production and manure production in kilograms and total revenues were determined. Efficiency calculations were carried out with the assumption of the daily operation of milk production stations in the form of firm performance and the results were obtained daily, monthly and annual. Tobit regression analysis and parents' statistics were used to determine the effective factors on the amount of efficacy. The results showed that the technical efficiency with constant returns was 0.844 and with the return on the variable of 0.962. The company's scale efficiency was 0.918, in which 16 days performance of the company was recorded with a slower return to scale and 349 days with incremental returns to scale. The technical efficiency value in the general condition was 0.901, the allocation efficiency was 0.845 and the economic efficiency was 0.761. In general, milk production efficiency was the highest in January and the lowest in April. Factors affecting the amount of technical efficiencies of feed and concentrate and health variables. The effect of feed and concentrate in livestock diets and the level of health has been negatively affected by technical efficiency. Effect of feed and concentrate variables on negative economic efficiency and positive health variable. In terms of the effectiveness of different efficiencies on the income of milk production, technical efficiency and allocation had a negative effect and economic efficiency had a positive effect.