Technical, Allocative, Scale and Economic Efficiencies of Paddy Production farms in Terai and Coastal Zones of West Bengal using Data Envelopment Analysis

The dream of agricultural growth in less developed countries with given scanty resource endowment and limited technology could be achieved by enhancing the efficiency of production. Data envelopment analysis is used to estimate the technical, allocative, economic and scale efficiencies of farms under paddy production in terai and coastal agroclimatic zones of West Bengal. The results revealed that most of the fields have high mean technical (≥ 0.90) and scale (≥ 0.93) efficiencies, implying that inputs are used in minimum levels necessary to achieve given output levels. On the other hand, most of the fields’ exhibited allocative (≥ 22%) and economic (≥ 28%) inefficiencies imply that the existence of inefficiency in application of inputs necessary to achieve cost minimization. The paddy farms in terai zone have exhibited high efficiency scores compared to the farms in coastal zone.