Ruba Al Qasem1* and Abdul Ghani Abdul Latif1
1 Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Aleppo University, Aleppo, Syria.
(*Corresponding author: Eng. Ruba Alqasem, Email: roubaalqasem@gmail.com).
Received: 20/ 4/ 2026 Accepted: 21/ 6/ 2026
Abstract:
The research aimed to evaluate the economic and technical efficiency of growing the “Spunta” potato variety in Homs Governorate, to compare the spring and autumn seasons during the 2024 agricultural season, using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, through a questionnaire that included (93) farms distributed between the spring (48 farms) and autumn (45 farms) seasons. The results showed a higher yield for the spring crop (2989.58 kg/dunum) compared to the autumn crop (2223.57 kg/dunum). However, the autumn crop outperformed the spring crop in relative economic indicators, achieving an economic profitability of approximately 99.77%, compared to 71.01% for the spring crop. The average technical efficiency under fixed yields was 83.6% for the spring crop and 86.9% for the autumn crop, while the average economic efficiency was 75.0% and 77.5% for the spring and autumn crops, respectively. This indicates the possibility of reducing costs by up to 25% without affecting production. The results also showed that the main obstacles to achieving full efficiency are due to administrative and allocation factors, not related to the potential of the variety itself. This underscores the need to improve resource management to reach the optimal yields (3224.88 kg/dunum and 2350.41 kg/dunum) for the spring and autumn crops. Sequence.
Keywords: Economic efficiency, technical efficiency, Allocative efficiency, Spunta potato variety, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Homs Governorate.
Full paper in Arabic: PDF