EXAMINING THE ECONOMIC FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN GOAT FARMS IN GREECE

This paper explores the economic factors that influence the Technical Efficiency in goat farms in Greece. The method applied for the microeconomic analysis is DEA. The selected research area is the geographical region of Thessaloniki, where a large number of goat farms are concentrated. The research data was collected by using questionnaires and through personal interviews with the "heads" of the goat farms. The analysis of farm efficiency showed that the majority of goat farms exhibit technical inefficiency, which can improve by reducing inflows by 24% in short terms and 32% in long term, keeping in both cases the same level of production. Due to the existence of increasing returns to scale the increase of the number of animals in goat farms would reduce production costs and improved financial results. If the farms wanted to eliminate their technical inefficiency they could reduce the feed cost. In a hypothesized reduction of 10% in the feed cost, the technical efficiency will be increased by 17%.