Coconut production in Tamil Nadu – an efficiency approach
1*G. Arun Prasath, 2D. Velmurugan, 3R. Venkataraman and 4S. Sathiyamurthi
1,2, 3Department of Agricultural Economics, 4Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar – 608002 (India) *Corresponding author email – arunprasathgtirupur@gmail.com (ORCID ID - 0000-0001-5295-981X)
ABSTRACT
Coimbatore district holds the largest area under coconut cultivation in Tamil Nadu with an area of 88467.14 ha. A sample of 90 coconut farms in Coimbatore district was selected purposively to study its resource use and technical efficiency. The results of production function analysis showed that all the inputs were found to be positively influencing the yield and increasing returns to scale was found to be operating in the study area. Resource use efficiency also confirms the same and showed that except manures and potassic fertilizers, all the other inputs were used in sub-optimal levels and hence, profits can be increased by further increasing those input levels to reach maximum production. The mean technical efficiency was found to be 82.67 per cent which showed almost 17.33 per cent shortfall to the total efficiency. The study concluded that farmers may not be conscious about the optimal level of input use and hence the suggested policy measure in this study includes education and training of farmers with latest agronomic practices to improve technical efficiency and timely application of optimal level of inputs to improve efficiency