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Abstract
This study aims to evaluate the producers’ efficiency using
measurements of technical and scope efficiencies and calculating in-dicators of economic performance for milk producers in the municipa-lity of Sobral, Ceará, Brazil. The data type was primary gathered by
applying questionnaires to 40 rural producers. The sample included
only producers with a minimum yield around 15 liter/day, however
yields below that level were consumed by the own farmers. The mea-surement of efficiency was determined for each one of the production
units (Decision Making Unit – DMU), utilizing the technique of data
envelopment analysis (DEA) and the Software DEAP v. 21, developed
by Coelli (1996). First, the producers were separated according the
degree of technical efficiency. After that, they were compared using
economic indicators aiming to determine the magnitude of inefficiency
performance (scores of efficiency lower than 0.9), which represented
67.5% of the sample. Therefore, the number of efficient producers was
very low (32.5% of the sample). In general, the efficient producers
showed better economic results. The negative net margin of inefficient
producers indicated a serious crisis that they were suffering, which was
confirmed by the disadvantageous relationship between the sale price
of the product and the average cost of production.