ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF AGRICULTURAL LABOR WITHIN THE DETERMINATES USE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY FOR WHEAT IN EGYPTIAN

The Egyptian agriculture relies on technology to develop the productivity of most of the main crops, including cereal crops, especially wheat, which is reflected in increasing of the cultivated area. According to the Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS): Egypt Vision 2030, The cultivated area with wheat had reached about 1326 thousand feddan in 1980, then it continued to increase until it reached about 1955, and2716 thousand feddan in 1990, and 2007 respectively, and reached its maximum in 2016 by about 3351 thousand feddan. Also, the productivity duplicated from about 1.36 tons/fed. in 1980, and reached about 4..2 tones/fed. in 2016. Egypt plans to reach the area cultivated with wheat to approximately 4.2 million feddan and about 3.6 tons/fed of its productivity in 2030, in order to increase Autarky to about 81% from the locally production. To achieve this target, the absorption of technology must be further increased by increasing the different technology methods, which is reflected in productivity increasing. Wheat crop was selected for the field study through the availability of field data to estimate some economic and statistical indicators that are difficult and it may be impossible to use the secondary data in its estimation. Also, The governorate of El-Behaira was selected According to the relative importance of wheat-cultivated area,where as total area is about 378 thousand feddan representing about 11.27% of total Egyptian cultivated area, it also selected according to the availability of different  types of machines which existing in that region. The study aims at estimate the economic efficiency of agricultural labor use in the light of specific modern technology which is used in Egyptian agriculture, represented by agricultural mechanization technology from the production farms of wheat crop in El-Behaira governorate during the agricultural season (2015-2016) in the short and long run of wheat farmers, where a simple random sample was selected from three villages in El-Behaira governorate (Berijat, Damshli, Alqam), The sample units divided three categories: the first category (less than 0.5 feddan), the second category (0.5 feddan - feddan), the third category (feddan and more) Short and long run for each category, in order to estimate some indicators of production and economic efficiency, and economics of scale. The estimation of short-run production function shows that total elasticity is about 1.3, 1.3, and 1.06 for the first, second and third categories of the sample respectively, while total elasticity is about 1.1 in the long-run, which reflecting the increasing returns to scale and farmers are producing in the first phase of the law of diminishing returns. The estimate of the cost functions in the short-run shows that the optimal production is about 14.1, 36.4 and 88.3 ardabb respectively for the three categories in the study sample, and the optimal production is about 47.7 ardabb in the long-run.