Resource Use Patterns and Resource Use Efficiency in Crop Agriculture: an Approach to Frontier Analysis

The rational use of agricultural resources is very crucial for increase in agricultural production, productivity and farm income, for improvement in the living standard of rural masses and for growth with social justice. This book tries to address various issues in crop agriculture and examines resource use patterns and resource use efficiency in West Bengal agriculture where farming system is dominated by the marginal farmers. A modest attempt has been made in this book to measure farm level overall productive efficiency in terms of unit cost of production on application of three sigma rule and specific input-use efficiency based on stochastic frontier production function analysis and curve fitting to reduce the gap between theory and practice in this regard. Efficiency differentials across size groups of farms by different approaches and structural change and labour absorption in agriculture are examined based on aggregated and disaggregated data at secondary and primary levels. Academicians, researchers, and policy makers in the field of agricultural economics will be the beneficiaries of this book.