Wise use of on-hand resources can increase vegetable output: expert

Vegetable production can be increased through horizontal expansion, development of modern technology and vertical expansion such as efficient use of on-hand resources. This is revealed in a thesis of a PhD scholar Dr Khuda Bakhsh of the Department of Environmental and Resource Economics.
He recently completed his PhD research on "An analysis of technical efficiency and profitability of growing patato, carrot, radish and bitter gourd: a case of Pakistani Punjab" under the supervision of Professor Bashir Ahmad Vice Chancellor, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.
He stressed for using of available resources more efficiently as there is no need to make extra efforts to bring new area under vegetable cultivation and/or changing cropping pattern. This implies that vegetable production could be increased through boosting productivity that will not only increase availability of vegetables in the country but it will also pick up income of the vegetable-growing farmers. He employed stochastic frontier production and ordinary least square estimates were used to determine yield level of vegetable production. On the basis of these estimates, profitability of vegetables was estimated.
Results showed that OLS was not appropriate method to determine production function for the given vegetables. Translog production function was preferable over Cobb-Douglas production function on the basis of log likelihood ratio test. It is found that radish growing farmers were using sewage water to irrigate radish crop during shortage of canal water and the use of sewage water badly distressed radish yield whereas in case of potato production, farmers would be using NPK nutrients above the recommended level. He also found that with the increase in age of the vegetable growers, level of technical efficiency would decline except in potato production where it was positively related with respondents' age. He pointed out that education in years of schooling was positively related with technical efficiency implying that the more educated vegetable growers were using available resources more efficiently.
One of the important findings of his study is that with the increased farm area, technical inefficiency declined due to the fact that vegetable growers were able to apply latest technology on the farm because of availability of financial resources. Access to extension services were found declining level of technical inefficiency in vegetable cultivation. He explored the mean level of technical efficiency was 82 percent in radish, 72 percent in carrot, 70 percent in potato and 66 percent in bitter gourd indicating that there exist potential to increase vegetable production by using existing resources more efficiently. He explored that most profitable vegetable was bitter gourd followed by carrot, potato and radish. The lowest cost per kg was estimated in carrot cultivation whereas the highest one was found in bitter gourd production.