Technical Efficiency of Bell Pepper (Capsicum fruitecence L.) Growing Farms- An Opportunity to Stabilize Agriculture Economy of Oman
Abstract
Vegetables generally have significant importance with respect to their food value in terms of nutrition as they contain both essential vitamins and minerals. Bell pepper (Capsicum frutescence L.)is an economically important vegetable crop with the potential to increase farmers' incomes in open fields and greenhouses in Oman. Bell pepper is popular as Capsicum among customers and farmers in Arabian Peninsula countries, including Oman, with fairly moderate retail prices compared to other vegetables. Hence, a survey study investigated the technical efficiency of Capsicum-growing farms in the Sultanate of Oman. The research investigated the technical efficiency of Capsicum-growing farms of different governorates of Oman. A sample of 52 Capsicum-growing farms was selected using the multistage sampling method; the interview schedules with the farmers were conducted for data collection from January 2016 to December 2017. The data collected were subjected to the maximum likelihood method and the Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production model. The output of Frontier 4.1 was found to be a good fit after performing various software econometrics. Our study revealed that the mean technical efficiency for Bell pepper-growing farms in Oman was estimated to be 87%, ranging from 50% to 99%. This indicated a considerable scope of increasing capsicum yield by 13% with altering levels of inputs employed by the farmers. Further, it was observed that among the inefficiency factors, farmers' age and experience contributed significantly to the technical efficiency of the farms. Bell pepper-growing farms had enormous scope to improve their efficiency and increase productivity by following regular extension programs involving the farmers.
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Introduction
Capsicum Bell pepper (Capsicum frutescence) is an important agricultural food commodity because of its economic value and nutritional contents in terms of vitamins and minerals besides possessing natural colors from green, yellow, orange, red, etc., depending on differences in varieties and anti-oxidant compounds (Howard et al., 2012). Bell pepper is reported to be one of the world'smost important fruit vegetables, along with tomatoes. Bell pepper provides essential minerals and vitamins like capsicums (Bosland & Votava, 2012). In 2020, the world'sproduction of bell peppers was 36 million tons, led by China, which made up 46% of the total (Tridge, 2022). Globally, the capsicum market size was found to be USD 4575.3 million in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 7214.05 million by 2032. Asia-Pacific held a leading capsicum market share in 2023 (Industry Research Report, 2024).
In the Arabian Peninsula, vegetables are grown under open fields and greenhouse conditions. The investigations of ICARDA's APRP (Arabian Peninsula Research Program) have shown that growing vegetables adapting protected agriculture has proved very successful in raising the livelihoods and economic stability of the farmers in the Arabian Peninsula in general and in Oman in particular (Osman et al., 2017).
In Oman, the total cultivated area was found to increase by 3.9 percent to reach 276,000 acres by the end of 2022 compared to that in 2021 (266,000 acres) with a total agricultural production of 3.501 million tons. Vegetables with a total area of 69,074 acres produced 1.137655 million tons in 2022 (NCSI, 2022). Increasing vegetable production has been projected to contribute to government efforts to diversify the national economy (MAF, 2019). Interestingly, Capsicum production volume was also found to have surged gradually from 9.4 million kg in 2008 to 93.42 million kg in 2022, according to FAO report with code 0401 (Tridge, 2022). This increased nature of production has been considered a positive indicator of the potential opportunities for Capsicum Bell pepper cultivation in Oman and other countries (FAO, 2016; MAF, 2019).
The present study used Stochastic Production Frontier (SPF) to evaluate Bell pepper production efficiency in Oman. Earlier, many scientists used frontier applications in the field of production in non-agriculture production industries (Seiford et al., 1990; Ganley & Cubbins, 1992; Fare et al., 1994). During the same period, SPF was applied in forestry (Sanusi et al., 2017), agriculture (Fernandez-Cornejo, 1994), horticulture (Zeibet et al., 1999), olericulture (Shrestha et al., 2016; Bozoglu & Ceyhan, 2007; Julie et al., 2017) besides dairy sciences (Mbaga et al., 2003). Of late, SPF has been effectively applied to comprehend the technical efficiency of producing different vegetable crops (Wahid et al., 2017) and Okra (Ume et al., 2018; Alabi et al., 2023). Recently, Senthilkumar et al. (2018), Alabi et al. (2022), and Martinez-Reina et al. (2022) have attempted to study the technical efficiency of production in Capsicum/ Bell pepper. All these studies in agriculture have suggested effective measures for raising the production efficiency of crops. Given the above facts, the present study was undertaken to know the technical efficiency of the farms growing Bell pepper Capsicum in Oman.
Conclusion
The mean efficiency level of Bell pepper was about 87%, indicating that 13% of the scope existed to raise the efficiency of production to 100% with the levels of inputs considered in the study. Intensifying extension activities on Bell pepper cultivation among the farmers and organizing training programs to improve their skills would increase Bell pepper productivity. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
