AGL 38.50 Increased By ▲ 0.93 (2.48%)
AIRLINK 131.80 Decreased By ▼ -0.70 (-0.53%)
BOP 5.60 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.71%)
CNERGY 3.84 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (1.86%)
DCL 8.70 Decreased By ▼ -0.17 (-1.92%)
DFML 40.80 Decreased By ▼ -0.20 (-0.49%)
DGKC 89.00 Decreased By ▼ -1.16 (-1.29%)
FCCL 35.22 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (0.4%)
FFBL 66.45 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-0.08%)
FFL 10.43 Increased By ▲ 0.28 (2.76%)
HUBC 109.61 Increased By ▲ 3.21 (3.02%)
HUMNL 14.66 Increased By ▲ 1.26 (9.4%)
KEL 4.83 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-0.62%)
KOSM 7.07 Increased By ▲ 0.22 (3.21%)
MLCF 42.60 Increased By ▲ 0.80 (1.91%)
NBP 59.00 Increased By ▲ 0.42 (0.72%)
OGDC 184.28 Increased By ▲ 3.03 (1.67%)
PAEL 25.70 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
PIBTL 5.90 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (1.2%)
PPL 147.80 Decreased By ▼ -0.60 (-0.4%)
PRL 23.61 Increased By ▲ 0.39 (1.68%)
PTC 16.45 Increased By ▲ 1.21 (7.94%)
SEARL 69.20 Increased By ▲ 0.41 (0.6%)
TELE 7.23 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.14%)
TOMCL 36.00 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
TPLP 7.57 Increased By ▲ 0.17 (2.3%)
TREET 14.19 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-0.35%)
TRG 50.86 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.02%)
UNITY 26.89 Increased By ▲ 0.49 (1.86%)
WTL 1.22 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.83%)
BR100 9,820 Increased By 52.6 (0.54%)
BR30 29,828 Increased By 428.1 (1.46%)
KSE100 92,359 Increased By 420.5 (0.46%)
KSE30 28,828 Increased By 84.4 (0.29%)

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.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2007

Comments

Comments are closed.