MEASURING TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICES

Abstract

With rapid technological advances in the second half of last century, the increasing dependence on science-based agriculture has placed greater importance on the fast and efficient transfer of the advanced knowledge to farmers. For most of countries, without an efficient agricultural sector, a country is severely constrained in its ability to feed itself and in consuming other goods and its development. Agricultural extension is one of the most common forms of public support to en hance the agricultural productivity. With costs rising, limited resources available, de creasing proportion of agricultural sector in the economy and changes in the prevailing philosophy of the appropriate extent of government intervention, it becomes more im perative to improve the performance of agricultural extension. Our research focuses on quantifying these changes brought up by agricultural exten sion. Existing literature on this quantification work on agricultural extension is scarce and inconclusive. Measuring the technical efficiency in a variety of fields has achieved rapid progress via the newly adopted econometric toolboxes; however, the correspond ing work in agricultural extension failed to keep in pace. One particular aspect that has been overlooked in agricultural extension literature is the possibility of sample selectiv ity. Given the public goods nature of agricultural extension, one should distinguish be tween the two production processes that are involved. In the first stage, an intermediate output is produced using only discretionary inputs (i.e.,variable and controllable by the decision making unit). In the second stage, final outcomes are determined by the level of the intermediate output and by environmental (i.e.,fixed) variables.