Application of Data Envelopment Analysis in measuring analyzing relative efficiency of wheat cultivation: case of Khorasan Razavi

In this study, we have utilized DEA methodology to measure technical, managerial, as well as scale efficiencies of wheat cultivation in Khorasan Razavi province. Data was collected from annual report of 1387 agricultural production of province. Complementary research data was gathered from secondary sources and a semi-structured interview with the relevant regional experts. The Spearman correlation between agricultural knowledge of wheat producers and their actual production output indicated this variable is an effective production input.Technical efficiency was measured for both constant and variable in comparison to the scale. Moreover, technical efficiency was analyzed for managerial and scale efficiency.Result of our study indicated an average technical efficiency of 0.497 for the whole province. In addition, managerial and scale efficiency were counted 0.732 and 0.654 respectively. Our research further showed that from 17 cities of the province 12 percent (2 cities) are predicting wheat in line of optimum efficiency while 82 percent (14 cities) are above and 6 percent (1 city) is below the optimum scale.