Prospects of Citrus Producers and Marketing in Pakistani California: a Case Study of Sargodha Region

Fruits and vegetables are important component in agriculture sector. Production and marketing studies were used to explore the cost parameters of the production and marketing and understand the inefficiency during production process and marketing channels. To observe the inefficiency during production, stochastic frontier production was used by using the primary data from two Tehsils of the Sargodha region known as Pakistan's California. It was concluded that all the input variables was directly related to technical efficiency except irrigation. Negative sign of the irrigation showed inverse relationship between irrigation and technical efficiency due to intercrop irrigation which resulted in over irrigation. Technical inefficiency model showed a positive relationship between age of the farmers, years of education and source of credit (dummy variable) while age-squared is inversely related to technical inefficiency. The marketing studies showed that by decreasing the number of the intermediaries in both form i.e. open and packed, not only the purchased price of the consumer decreased but also marketing efficiency of the market increased.