Efficiency analysis of olive farms: The case study of Mugla province, Turkey

Abstract

The fact that usage and efficiency of the resources gradually increased in agricultural production throughout the world and Turkey is a concern requires efficient and profitable usage of the existing resources. For this reason, using the existing resources which agricultural businesses possess efficiently is very important regarding the sustainability of agricultural production. One of the methods used in calculating and analyzing efficiency in the businesses by taking the inputs and outputs into consideration is data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this study, face-to-face survey has been conducted among 66 olive farms located in Milas and the efficiency of the olive farms has been determined by using DEA. The results of this study showed that there is a huge difference among the olive farms regarding technical efficiency. While technical efficiency scores of the olive farms range between 14.31% and 100% in input-oriented DEA analysis, they range between 2% and 100% in output-oriented DEA analysis. Furthermore, output-oriented scale efficiency analysis proves that the olive farms do not operate in accordance with the optimum scale.