The analysis of cost and profit efficiencies of a sample of 588 Quebec dairy farms shows significant potential to reduce costs and increase profits. In general, the small farms were more cost efficient while large farms were more profit efficient. Increased use of farm grown feed was associated with higher efficiency while increased use of concentrates was associated with lower efficiency. / The productivity of individual dairy farms were estimated using data envelopment analysis. The average annual growth rate of productivity was 0.70% with a standard deviation of 2.44% for the 1987--93 period. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficient did not show any significant relationship between farm size and growth rate. / The Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) approach, used for the first time to estimate technical efficiency, performed equally as good as the regression models in modeling the technology especially at the higher levels of output. The efficiency values estimated using ANN were higher than that estimated by ordinary least squares method. The results indicate the existence of significant potential for improving the efficiency of resources on Quebec dairy farms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.20234 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Shanmugam, Ramaradj. |
| Contributors | Gunjal, Kisan (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Agricultural Economics.) |
| Rights | © Ramaradj Shanmugam, 1998 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001657764, proquestno: MQ44104, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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