Eficiência técnica e desempenho econômico de produtores de leite no Estado do Ceará, Brasil

This study aims to evaluate the producers’ efficiency using measurements of technical and scope efficiencies and calculating in-dicators of economic performance for milk producers in the municipa-lity of Sobral, Ceará, Brazil. The data type was primary gathered by applying questionnaires to 40 rural producers. The sample included only producers with a minimum yield around 15 liter/day, however yields below that level were consumed by the own farmers. The mea-surement of efficiency was determined for each one of the production units (Decision Making Unit – DMU), utilizing the technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the Software DEAP v. 21, developed by Coelli (1996). First, the producers were separated according the degree of technical efficiency. After that, they were compared using economic indicators aiming to determine the magnitude of inefficiency performance (scores of efficiency lower than 0.9), which represented 67.5% of the sample. Therefore, the number of efficient producers was very low (32.5% of the sample). In general, the efficient producers showed better economic results. The negative net margin of inefficient producers indicated a serious crisis that they were suffering, which was confirmed by the disadvantageous relationship between the sale price of the product and the average cost of production.