Farmers’ Education and Profit Efficiency in Sugarcane Production : A Stochastic Frontier Profit Function Approach

In a globally competitive environment where everything is commercialized, agriculture is no exception. The role that education of the effective head of the farm household, education of the family of the farm household and their experience plays, in addition to the primary inputs, in improving the profit efficiency of the farm household has been empirically tested for the primary data collected from 200 sugarcane farm households in Orissa. The results of the joint estimation of parameters of profit function and the inefficiency components suggest that 93% differences in the efficiency scores are due to profit inefficiency, and profit inefficiency reduces significantly with higher education. The mean efficiency is 79% and more than 80% of the farmers achieve 70-99% profit efficiency. A grassroots level farming practice awareness program both by government and private agencies as well as the reorientation of the formal education curriculum toward farm-oriented curriculum are highly recommended