Abstract:
Despite positive agricultural developments over the period 1980–2007, significant increases in cultivated area are not expected, given scarce water resources and limited technology. With this in mind, the study sets out to explore prospects for better usage and allocation of existing limited resources by assessing the technical, allocative and economic efficiency of crop production in Egypt at the governorate level and by region. A non-parametric frontier model (DEA) is used to estimate the efficiency of Egyptian crop production at the farm and village levels using data of the Agricultural Farm Income Survey (AFIS) for 2003/2004. On average, the results suggest that the sector suffers from serious allocative and technical inefficiencies, which if resolved crop production could exceed by 45 percent the level achieved in 2003/2004. The study also tries to identify the determinants of efficiency, which are useful in guiding extension activities, research and technical support.
