Inter-zonal efficiency differences: study based on farmers of West Bengal

The present study uses Data Envelopment Analysis to study inter-zonal variation in farm productivity in West Bengal. Malmquist Productivity Indices was used to delineate the performance of different farmers across various agro climatic regions of West Bengal. The results indicate that farmers from some of the advance zone in terms of agro-climatic features are failed to optimize their inputs in order to obtain a targeted level of output. While some of the backward zone perform better. We have taken envelop of frontier of all zones as reference for comparisons between productivity performances of different zones. The productivity indices are comparable with the zonal efficiencies except in few cases.