Components affecting the technical efficiency of barley farmers in Asadabad city

Given the strategic importance of barley production in the livestock sector of Iran, the study aimed at analyzing the technical efficiency of irrigated barley farmers od Assadabad county of Iran and determining the various components affecting it using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach as well as Tobit regression model. The required data were collected by stratified random sampling through completing 180 questionnaires in 2019-2020. The study results showed that the average technical, managerial and scale efficiencies were 79.3, 82.5 and 96.1 percent, respectively; and 63 percent of the farmers operated in the increasing, 25 percent in the decreasing and only 12 percent in the optimal scale (constant returns to scale), which seemed reasonable to increase the scale of production to increase the efficiency; in addition, the most significant effects on the technical and managerial efficiencies were related to the experience, education of household head, number of plots and crop diversification and on the scale efficiency, were related to the number of plots, ownership of tractors and agricultural instruments and education variables, respectively, indicating the prominent role and high importance of these variables in improving production efficiency. Therefore, adopting policies to integrate and prevent the fragmented and dispersed lands, such as encouraging group activities and establishing production cooperatives, providing facilities to mechanize farms, appropriate and practical training to farmers and raising their agricultural literacy level, transferring the experiences of leading farmers to inexperienced farmers as well as encouraging the crop diversification is essential to increase the technical efficiency of irrigated barley production.