EFFICIENCY OF THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIC RESOURCES USED IN SUMMER TOMATO PRODUCTION IN ALEXANDRIA GOVERNORATE

The research aimed to measuring the Efficiency of the Agricultural Economic Resources Used in Summer Tomato Production in Alexandria Governorate, the research is relied on using of some descriptive and quantitative economic analysis methods in data analysis, especially Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, based on field data collected during the 2020 season from 30 summer tomato's farmers in Alexandria Governorate. The research reached a set of results, the most important of which can be reviewed as follows: (1) The overall efficiency criteria for a feddan of summer tomatoes in the research sample are: the net return is about 12.52 thousand pounds, the income over variable costs is about 17 thousand pounds, the benefitcosts ratio is about 1.41, and the profit of the spent pound is about 0.41 pounds. (2) The average Scale Efficiency was about 95.6%, which means that the percentage of exploitation of economic resources used in production in summer tomato farms in the research sample was about 95.6%, indicating that there is a possibility of expansion of 4.4% to reach the optimum volume of production on these farms. (3) The average Technical Efficiency according to the (BCC) model is about 98.4%, and this confirms the possibility of increasing the summer tomato production by 1.6% without increasing the amount of economic resources used. (4) Inefficient farms can achieve complete technical efficiency as reference farms by reducing the economic resources used, which are: the human labor by 7.22%, the automated work hours by 8.36%, the seedlings by 2%, the fertilizer Municipal by 4.62%, nitrogen fertilizer by 4.39%, phosphate fertilizer by 4.96%, potassium fertilizer by 4.93%, and pesticides by 6.81%, while keeping the same volume of production of summer tomatoes research sample. (5) The average Allocative Efficiency of summer tomato farms was about 79.7%, which means that re-employing the used economic resources will save about 20.3% of the production cost through adopting better technology and optimal employment of resources. (6) The average Cost-Efficiency of summer tomato farms in the research sample was about 78.4%, which means that production costs can be reduced by about 21.6% of the current production costs without affecting the production level of summer tomatoes. (7) Achieving the technical efficiency of summer tomato production at the level of Alexandria Governorate the following: (a) Increasing production by 13.07 tons, with a monetary value estimated at 23.59 milliom pounds, (b) providing an area of agricultural land with a horizontal expansion of 586.12 feddans, which is equivalent to the increase achieved In production as a result of raising technical efficiency, (c) rationalizing the use of irrigation water in Alexandria, with a total of about 2.04 million m3 , which is the amount of savings achieved in irrigation water that is necessary for the area of land that has been provided in Alexandria. In light of the findings of the research, it recommends the necessity; (1) Educating summer tomato farmers about the optimal the economic resources used in production to reach the optimum volume of production, (2) Reduce the prices of agricultural production inputs and provide them in a timely manner so that the farmer does not resort to the black market, (3) Issuing advisory bulletins to confront the changing climate and high temperatures in summer tomato cultivation.