Technical Efficiency and Total Factor Productivity Growth in the Hazelnut Agricultural Sales Cooperatives Unions in Turkey

This study measures the production efficiencies and total factor productivity changes of Hazelnut Agricultural Sales Cooperatives Unions (HASCUs) in Turkey over the period 2004-2008. Turkey produces %78.2 hazelnut production of world and gives service to 233,820 farmers in the Black Sea Region of Turkey. To measure production efficiencies of these units, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Approach and Malmquist Productivity Indexes are used. In the our efficiency analysis, the data of 50 HASCUs is considered but only the data of 37 cooperative units is found appropriate for the DEA. The findings of our study show that the average annual technical efficiency scores of HASCUs change between 0.841 and 0.938. It has also been observed that there are average annual %1.3 improvements in technical efficiency, 3% regress in technical change, and %1.7 decreases in the total factor productivity of the HASCUs over the period 2004-2008.