Changes in technical efficiency of the broiler production in Poland, 1994–2013

Abstract

1. The effects of changes in technical efficiency on the increase of broiler production are presented for the period 1994-2013 based on the panel data from seven farms located in southern and central Poland. A total of 766 cycles were analysed. 2. The Cobb-Douglas production function was used to assess the changes of output elasticities as well as technical changes in broiler production, for 5-year sub-periods separately. 3. Technical indices of broiler production significantly improved between years 1994-2013: feed conversion ratio decreased from 2.50 kg/kg to 1.78 kg/kg, mortality rate from 8.8% to 4.0% and daily weight gain increased from 37.1 g/d to 58.7 g/d, respectively. 4. Before accession to the EU, there was a substantial increase of fixed capital connected with modernisation of buildings and equipment. In the period 1994-2013, inputs of fixed capital per kilogram of livestock increased by 72% and at the same time the input of labour decreased by 56%. 5. Technical changes in years 1994-1998 contributed to a rapid production increase at a rate of 4.6% annually and only by up to 0.7% annually during 2009-2013. The slowdown of production rate increase after 2009 was partially caused by decreasing the stocking density.

Agricultural Entrepreneurship in the European Union: Contributions for a Sustainable Development

“…Martinho [1] considered the Cobb-Douglas developments to analyse the common agricultural policy impacts on the dynamics of the Portuguese agricultural sector. Utnik-Banas et al [105] analysed the technical efficiency from some Polish broiler production farms, taking into account as a base the Cobb-Douglas model and considering as inputs, for example, several costs, labour and fixed capital. In fact, in these models, namely when regression approaches are considered, it is important to limit the number of variables to avoid statistical problems, specifically multicollinearity.…”

Basic Production Parameters of Small Capacity Broiler Farms in the Region of Banja Luka

“…A more accurate estimation in comparison of different farms can be made by using the European production efficiency factor (EPEF), an aggregate value calculated on basis of several production parameters (Shane, 2013). The production performance of broiler farms, despite a high degree of unification and intensity of technology, is subject to variation, and can be influenced by a number of factors, such as location, capacity and technological equipment of the farm, climate, transport conditions and quality of day-old chicks, feed and water quality, microclimate, the length of period between rounds and growers' competence (Sasaki et al, 2014;Mesa et al, 2017;Utnik-Banaś et al, 2018). Acceptable production performance in our conditions, as well as its dependence on housing density, fattening duration, and day-old chick weight or hybrid provenience have been reported by Mitrović et al (2005), Mitrović et al (2010), and Pandurević (2010.…”

“…Declining value of the EPEF with the extension of fattening duration, determined in this study, is consistent with the findings of Schmidt ( 2008) and Mitrović et al (2010), although an earlier study by Mitrović et al (2006) did not confirm this relationhip. The EPEF reflects the overall quality of farm conditions, chicks and fattening technology, so high production performance implies assuring high criteria for these factors, which could be demanding in practical production conditions (Utnik-Banaś et al, 2018). Consequently, technology of broiler chicken fattening is commonly adapted to local natural, technical, social and economic factors, especially in terms of production intensity, housing and feed quality, meat processing industry requirements and consumer affinity, which lastly define the broiler farm production performance.…”

Assessing the Technical Efficiency of Timber Production during the Transition from a Production-Oriented Management Model to a Multifunctional One: A Case from Poland 1990–2019

“…The frontier is most often defined by means of Cobb-Douglass (CD) or translog production functions (TL). The parameters of those functions can be used to determine elasticity coefficients, with the elasticities of inputs in the CD function being global across the input space and not dependent on the level of inputs [8,9]. The TL production function is based on flexible functional forms to ensure that elasticities depend on the functional form of the vector of inputs [10].…”