Technical Efficiency in Dual Purpose Cattle Systems in the Basin of Maracaibo's Lake, Venezuela

Dual purpose cattle system is a well adapted modality to tropical conditions and have contributed in an greatly way to supply milk and meat in these regions. Nevertheless, their questionable efficiency levels require a study that allows identify factors that affect their efficiency. This research was carried out in order to analyse the technical efficiency of dual purpose cattle system in the basin of Maracaibo's Lake and to study possible associations that explain their performance. Models that were solved with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) were used, and applied a bootstrap technique to correct bias on the efficiency indexes, also were identified types of scale return where each system operates, as well as the factors related to the efficiency. DEA analysis showed that less than 7% of the production units operate with technical efficiency, 34.7% with scale efficiency and only 13.8% with pure technical efficiency; consequently there is an important improvement potential in these cattle systems. Since 40% of the production units are placed in decreasing scale return, it becomes necessary to correct the over-sized inputs or intensify the use of those inputs that are difficult to change in the short term. On the other hand, an important improvement of the meat production is required. Results demonstrated that differences between bias corrected efficiency indexes can be better explained by the zone of location, the farm size and by the amount of meat production, but not by the production modality, even though, the increase of meat production would depend essentially on the change of the production modality.