Benchmarking the performance of organic farming in India

Abstract

This study set out to measure the performance of organic farming in India. The study utilized data of 21 Indian states for the period 2016–2017, and the states are considered as decision making units for performance assessment. In the first step, we compared the “pure organic production” or “production technology set A” with the “production including the conversion period” of organic farming or “production technology set B” by incorporating the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method of performance evaluation. In the second step, we estimated the performance of “pure organic production” and applied the bootstrap DEA method to correct the biasness in the traditional DEA approach. The input-oriented DEA model reveals that on average technical efficiency of organic farming production is 84.7%, and the output-oriented DEA model concludes 20% technical efficiency which means organic farming production can be increased by 80% with the same amount of inputs utilization. Evidence is presented in the conclusion which shows that organic farming practice is highly beneficial for land degraded states of India. The findings can contribute to implement policies for organic farming production in Indian states. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd