The effects of veterinary services on technical efficiency of dairy farms in Iran: a DEA approach

The aim of this study is to investigate the context by which veterinary services may affect technical efficiency (TE) of Iranian dairy farms. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) was applied to a random sample of 840 dairy farms from six provinces across Iran to estimate regional frontier and metafrontier production functions and also to calculate corresponding TE of these farms. The relationship between the levels of veterinary services and TE scores were then examined using correlation analysis, t-test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicated that mean technical efficiency estimated based on the regional frontier production function for selected provinces varies between 0.720 and 0.867 while ranges between 0.445 and 0.595 when evaluated based on the metafrontier production function. Also, our findings showed that veterinary services have a positive effect on TE scores. This implies that TE can be improved by utilizing higher levels of veterinary services. Furthermore, access to more suitable veterinary services was recognized to be a major determinant of technical operation as was the case in Tehran.