Achieving a higher level of efficiency is one of the main goals of agricultural cooperatives. However, it is not clear whether the cooperative farms are more efficient than non-cooperative farms. In this line, the present study aims to compare the performance of the cooperative and non-cooperative farms by employing the super-efficiency data envelopment analysis (DEA). To this end, a survey was designed to collect data from the sugar beet farmers of West Azerbaijan province in Iran. Overall, 30 samples from cooperative farms and 29 samples from noncooperative farms were interviewed randomly. Then, the efficiency scores for both sample groups were calculated separately. Finally, the average of efficiency scores was compared by using the non-parametric approach (Mann-Whitney test). The study findings revealed that the average efficiency scores of cooperative farms are significantly higher than non-cooperatives farms. Additionally, the results emphasized the economy of scale among the cooperative farms. Overall, we found that performance of sugar beet cooperatives is substantially better than the non-cooperatives; thus, supporting the cooperatives is recommended in the study area in order to improve the efficiency.
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