PROFITABILITY AND TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF MUSHROOM PRODUCTION IN SELECTED AREAS OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

The present study was designed to measure the profitability and technical efficiency of Mushroom farmers in selected areas of two area in Savar under Dhaka District and Taragonj under Rangpur district. Primary data were collected from randomly selected 20 farmers each study area total 40 sample. Both tabular and functional analyses were applied in this study. The major findings of the study reveal that Mushroom production is profitable. Total cost of production was Tk. 9146.45 per 100 bags Mushroom. Gross return was Tk. 15,883.17 per 100 Mushroom and net returns was Tk. 6736.71 per 100 bags Mushroom. Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) was found to be 1.59 which implies that one taka investment in Mushroom production generated Tk. 1.59. The Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production function was used for this study to measure technical efficiency of Mushroom farmers. The coefficients of parameters of Spawn, water cost and Mushroom subtract cost were 0.5703, 0.2024, 0.1289 negative and significant at 10%, 5% and 1% level of significant respectively. Where human labor was found positive and significant at 1 percent level of significant. In the technical inefficiency effect model, experience, training, farm size, extension service and credit service have negative coefficients indicating that this helps in reducing technical inefficiency of Mushroom farmers. The coefficients of education is positive meaning that these factors have no impact on the technical inefficiency. That is, these factors do not reduce or increase technical inefficiency of producing mushroom. The study revealed that a considerable improvement took place to increase household income of the farmers in the study area and to improve the socioeconomic conditions with the introduction of large-scale commercial Mushroom production. The study also identified some Production , Marketing , Technical and Awareness problems and constraints faced by the Mushroom farmers and suggested some recommendations to improve the present production situation so that per 40 Mushroom yield of Mushroom would possibly be increased.