Assimilating the Responsible Factors for the Technical Efficiency of Organic Brown Sugar Production: Stochastic Frontier Approach

Abstract

The demand for organic brown sugar has shown significant growth in recent years, presenting an opportunity to enhance production by strategically leveraging existing expertise among stakeholders. The objective of this study was to assess the viability of producing brown sugar, with a particular focus on the technical efficiency of marginal cane farmers. This study investigates the technical efficiency of sugarcane farmers who are concurrently engaged in the production of organic brown sugar within a specific region in Bangladesh. The data collection process involved the use of purposive sampling, which resulted in the collection of 163 farm data sets from September to December 2021. Subsequently, a stochastic frontier production function was carefully employed to estimate the technical efficiency of the selected brown sugar producers. The findings of the current study demonstrate that less than half of the respondents (47.24%) were involved in activities linked to maintain a high efficiency level that was greater than 91 percent. It was discovered that a range of technical efficiency scores, which varied from 49.94 to 98.38 percent, with a mean value of 84.5%. There exists a significant potential for enhancing crop productivity by up to 15.5% with the implementation of improved agricultural management techniques like substantial experience, education, and training which tends to exhibit enhanced the efficiency of the production.