Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Custos e Agronegocio, cilt.17, sa.4, ss.92-112, 2021 (SCI-Expanded)
Although Turkey ranks sixth in the world in tea production, it does not have a say in tea export. The reason for this is that the tea production season is short and the inputs used in production are not used efficiently. Therefore, this study aims to determine the efficiency levels of enterprises growing tea and the unit cost of fresh tea production. In the study, 220 tea growers were interviewed face-to-face by using the proportional sampling method. Questionnaires were administered to 100, 70, and 50 tea growers in Rize, Trabzon, and Artvin provinces, respectively. the Bootstrap method was used for estimating the technical efficiency coefficients, and cost analysis was employed for calculating profitability. According to the first stage of the Bootstrap results, 66.8% of the enterprises had technical efficiency, but 33.2% of them did not work efficiently. In the second stage of this method, Rize and Artvin provinces were found to have better efficiency compared to Trabzon province. The socio-demographic characteristics such as age, education, having non-agricultural jobs, income, and experience of the householder; and size and years of tea farm belonging to the enterprise with and the tea price of the previous year were having a positive effect on technical efficiency. In addition, the cost of 1 kg fresh tea in the region was found to be 2.02 TRY. Apart from reducing the inputs used in tea production, minimizing the problems encountered in the production process will provide both economic and environmental gains.