Abstract
Sugarcane is an important cash cum industrial crop in Bangladesh. It is the main raw material of sugar and gur. Meeting the increasing demand for sugar and gur, a parallel sugar/gur production is required. This can be achieved by increasing the utilization of inputs and effectively organizing the management of production. The present study was undertaken in the selected areas viz., Rajshahi, Thakurgaon and Panchagar as well as Bangladesh to analyze the possibilities for improving productivity and reducing yield gap of sugarcane by increasing the farmers' productive efficiency. The study employed farm level cross sectional data collected from 300 sample farmers during the period 2007/08. For growth rate and area response log linear and Nerlovian Partial Adjustment model were used. Time series data for the period 1975/76 to 2007/08 were also employed in this study. It was observed that the average yield was found to be 58.53 t/ha with the highest average at Rajshahi (62.30 t/ha) followed by Panchagar (57.80 t/ha) and Thakurgaon 55.80 t/ha). Among the farm categories, the large farmers produced the highest yield (59.83 t/ha) followed by medium (59.09 t/ha) and small (56.67 t/ha) farmers. The estimated stochastic frontier production function model showed that the human labour, animal labour, seed, urea, furadan 5 G 5 G and irrigation cost had a positive and significant impact on sugarcane production. The mean technical efficiency of sugarcane growers was 0.76 suggesting the existence of technical inefficiency by 24 percent. So, there was an ample scope to increase the farmers' income and sugarcane yield by adopting the technologies by the farmers. Likewise, the mean allocative efficiency of 0.82 implied that there was an average level of 18 percent allocative inefficiency. The estimated cost frontier showed positively significant value of human labour and Muruate of Potash (MP) price positive and significant, which implied that increase of human labour and MP price resulted in the increase of sugarcane production cost. The average economic efficiency was found to be 0.62. Thus farmers' economic efficiency could be enhanced by 38 percent through the improvement of both technical and allocative efficiency. The coefficients of sugarcane farming experience, plot visit by the field workers and training on sugarcane production were negatively significant in the inefficiency model implying that inefficiency decreases with the increases in farmers' experience, visit by the field workers and training on sugarcane production. In the comparison of sugarcane and major crops the highest and positive growth rate of area and production were obtained by potato followed by wheat, lentil and rice. The growth rate of sugarcane area was positive but not significant although the production was stagnant. The growth rate of real price of all crops was negative but non significant, while that of sugarcane was negative and significant. This indicated that the sugarcane farmers received decreased real price. The instability of potato real price was the highest followed by that of lentil and wheat. Within the three sugar mills the sugarcane area instability of Thakurgaon was the highest followed by Rajshahi and Panchagar. For the country as a whole the lag one year area, price, relative price and relative price risk played a dominant role in determining current year allocation under sugarcane. The farmers did not take into consideration the relative yield risk and irrigated area for making a decision about the allocation of sugarcane area. Though irrigation had a positive impact on sugarcane production but the lag one year irrigated area had the negative impact on the current year sugarcane land allocation. When irrigated area increased the farmers were interested to allocate their land for cereals and other short growing high value crops. The yield gap-1 was estimated at 23.28 t/ha which was the difference between experimental yield and potential farm yield and again the yield gap -II was 25.69 t/ha which was the difference between potential farm yield and actual farm level yield. The respondent reports a large number of technical and socio economic constraints which are the causes of yield gaps. The study suggests the existence of some gaps in sugarcane yield, which may be reduced through increasing efficiency. Government policy can be taken in order to increasing efficiency by farmers' training, increased extension activities, subsidized input supply, price support and price declaration before planting season.