Technical and cost efficiency of pond fish farms: Do young educated farmers bring changes?
Shamima Islam, Sandip Mitra, Md. Akhtaruzzaman Khan
Abstract
This study investigates how the involvement of young and educated farmers in commercial aquaculture in Bangladesh influences the technical and cost efficiency using data obtained from 100 interviews with fish farmers in Bangladesh. The translog stochastic frontier production function was employed to determine the technical efficiency while Cobb-Douglas cost function was used to determine cost efficiency. Younger farmers often used fewer inputs than older farmers did while farmers with higher levels of education used inputs more effectively. Technical efficiency of pond fish farmers is 84% while the cost efficiency of pond fish farmers is 53%. Fish productivity increases with the quantity of fingerlings, interaction between labor and feed, feed and water cleaning cost, labor and water cleaning cost, water cleaning cost 2 while fish productivity reduces with labor, water cleaning cost and feed 2 . Besides, technical inefficiency lessens with years of schooling and increases with the age of the farmers. In addition, the price of labor, feed, and fingerlings has a significant positive impact on the cost of production. Cost efficiency reduces with the feed conversion ratio (FCR) while it increases with education and when using water only for fish culture.