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Abstract:The study assesses international competitiveness, profitability, output supply and input demand of maize production using a farm survey data of 165 farmers from two major maize growing areas (i.e., Dinajpur and Lalmonirhat districts) of northwestern Bangladesh. Results revealed that maize production is globally competitive and, therefore, can successfully substitute its import. Maize production is also profitable at the farm level (Benefit Cost Ratio = 1.21) with no adverse influence of farm size on yield and profitability. Maize farmers are also responsive to changes in market prices of inputs and outputs. A 1% increase in maize price will increase output supply by 0.4%. The most dominant driver of maize supply and other input demands is land. A 1% increase in available land will increase maize supply by a substantial 3.9%. In addition, landless laborers will benefit through an increase in hired labor demand when land area increases. Policy implications include investments in R&D, tenurial reform to consolidate land holding and smooth functioning of the hired labor market in order to increase maize production and profitability in Bangladesh.

There is a widely held belief among public consumers that rice prices are manipulated in Bangladesh. This manipulation may have led to price asymmetry in the vertical chain of Bangladesh rice markets. This paper is an attempt to investigate the existence of asymmetry between wholesale and retail rice prices in Bangladesh. Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) based cointegration test was applied to determine long-run equilibrium relationship. We examine whether the wholesale market dominates the retail market-in terms of price discovery and price leadership-or vice versa. Finally, we analyze whether the wholesale-retail price relationship is asymmetric with respect to price increases and price decreases. To test the asymmetric price transmission we used the asymmetric error correction-EG approach. Our results show that wholesale and retail prices are cointegrated, and wholesale market plays a leadership role in determining retail prices, which is in line with industrial organization theory. Our results confirm the fear and concerns of consumers about the existence of price asymmetry. [JEL Classification: Q110; Q113]. C

The economic growth and stability of Bangladesh is primarily dependent on agriculture. The poultry sub-sector in comparison to other sectors has a high potential for growth for a wide range 3 of reasons. Poultry meat farming has a considerable potential for providing income opportunities, 4 reducing malnutrition, generating employment and alleviating poverty in Bangladesh (Jensen, 5 1999). Poultry meat has a great demand as compared to other meat, simply because of its low 6 cost as well as the religious taboos in case of pork and beef in Bangladesh. 7 In Bangladesh, commercial poultry farming started not earlier than the 1980's. Being a meat 8 deficit country with a fast growing population in an already densely populated country, from the 9 1990's Bangladesh has pursued a development policy in the poultry sector based on 10 enhancement of the commercial poultry meat production. This resulted in a spectacular increase 11 in the number of poultry farms (ECNEC, 1999). This policy has also led to a substantial increase 12 in poultry meat production from 66,357 thousand metric tons in 1990 to 102,000 thousand metric 13 tons in 2007 (FAOStat, 2008). However, the per capita yearly demand is 7.67 kg/year, whereas 14 per capita production is only 3 kg/year, resulting in a per capita deficit 4.67 kg/year. Thus the 15 current production is not so impressive given a deficiency of 61% meat demand in the country. 16 Under above circumstances, the poultry sector productivity growth needs to be fostered, either 17 through technological development or an increase in production efficiency or a combination of 18 both, in order to stand the demand pressure and self sufficiency of meat production. Therefore, it 19 appears that commercial poultry farming systems must be further developed and ways must be 20 sought to improve the efficiency of the existing production technology. To this end, measuring 21 farms' efficiency is an important issue that could be a first logical step in a process that leads to 22 substantial resources utilization improvement.

The growth rate of poultry meat production is not sufficient to satisfy the per capita meat requirement in Bangladesh. Therefore ways to improve the efficiency of the existing production technologies must be investigated if these demands are to be met. This review examines ways this could be achieved. The technical, allocative and economic efficiency of poultry meat production based on farm level survey data was estimated using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. The study used 100 commercial poultry farms in Bangladesh for the calendar year of 2007. The results demonstrated that there is substantial technical, allocative and economic inefficiency in poultry production in Bangladesh. Under the constant return to scale (CRS) specification, technical, allocative and economic efficiencies were 88, 70 and 72% respectively, whereas under the variable returns to scale (VRS) specification those efficiencies were 89, 73, 66% respectively. Thus, the results indicate that efficiencies varied substantially across the sample farms. In order to attempt to explain some of these variations, the efficiency scores were regressed based on farm specific variables such as the farmer's age, education, experience, total landholdings, poultry farm size and level of training using a Tobit regression framework. The estimated DEA model identified that there is great potential for increasing poultry farm efficiency using the existing level of inputs and resources more efficiently. Specifically it showed that the level of education and training the farmer receives are two of the most important factors contributing to the variations in efficiency seen during this study. These research findings are valuable to policy makers and extension workers in order to guide policies towards increasing efficiency.

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