Evaluating the Impact of Environmental Pollutants on Technical Efficiencies of Dairy Farms Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Livestock industry, one of the most important sub-sectors of agricultural sector, produces the basic foods including milk and meat that must be increase to meet the demand and exporting excess demand. Due to the semi-competitive nature of input and output markets of livestock products, one of the ways to increasing production and profit is increasing the efficiency of production units. The aim of this study is evaluating the technical and environmental efficiencies of dairy farms using Stochastic Frontier Analysis in Sarab County. Required data collected using simple random sampling and completing 51 questionnaires at year 1394. According to the results of Stochastic Frontier Analysis average technical and environmental efficiencies averaging 95% and 72%, respectively. For comparing the difference between the average technical and environmental efficiency, Kruskal-Wallis test used that the result confirms the significant difference between the average efficiencies. Given the significant differences between the technical and environmental efficiencies, it is suggesting that environmental issues to be considered in the estimation of the efficiency of production units.