IMPACT OF LABOR MIGRATION ON TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OFTEA SMALLHOLDERSIN LOW COUNTRY WET ZONE
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Date
2013
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Labor migration can create more optimistic impact as well as the more pessimistic impact to tea small holding sector. Remittances and the lab our shortage are the more optimistic and pessimistic effects of labor migration. Due to this optimistic and pessimistic effects labor migration can change the technical efficiency of tea small holders. With this background, in this study, the impact of labor out-migration on technical efficiency of the tea small holders in the low Country Wet Zone of Sri Lanka was estimated in order to identify the potential to increase production without incurring any additional costs for inputs. The primary data collected from 200 tea small holders in Ratnapura and Kalawana DS divisions. Maximum likelihood estimate is used to estimate the stochasticfrontier model. According to the Cobb-Douglas specification, the coefficients for land Extend, family labor, hired labor, fertilizer, chemical cost, dolomite cost and remittances usage for tea land and dummy variable for remittances usage of tea land significantly affect yield.The meantechnical efficiency of the tea small holdings sector in the low Country WetZone was found to be 7l percent. The result for the inefficiency modelindicates that age of house hold head, education of household head, dependence ratio, amount of remittances sent, period of migration, age of migration, and the education of migration havasignificant effects on inefficiency. This studyfinds that migrant farmers produce gFen leaf more efficiently that non migrant farmers.
Key word: Migration, Cobb-Douglas production function, Technical efficiency, stochastic frontier, Tea Small holders
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Export Agriculture Degree Programme (EAG)