The Production and Economic Efficiency of Flax in the Gharbia Governorate

The research problem addressed by this research is the decline in the area cultivated with flax in Egypt from about 24,146 thousand feddan in the average period (2000-2004) to about 8.905 thousand feddan in the average period (2013-2018), or about 63%, which resulted in the existence of A large gap, ranging between 50-60%, between the domestic production of flax oil and the domestic consumption of it is being filled by imports from abroad in hard currency, as well as the decline in Egyptian exports of flax fibers. The research aimed mainly at the economic analysis of the efficiency of the use of resources used in the production of flax in the study sample in Gharbia Governorate and to identify the most important production and marketing obstacles that the study sample farmers were exposed to in order to develop a perception of how to achieve the horizontal expansion of this crop. The results of the study indicate a decline in the cultivated area and the feddan productivity of flax straw and the feddan productivity of its seed during the period (2000 - 2018) by 6.1%, 1.2% and 1.2% for each, respectively. As revealed from the results of the study sample in Gharbia Governorate in 2018, the net yield per feddan of flax at the level of the study sample amounted to 5858.78 pounds, and in the first holding category reached about 4426.5 pounds, in the second category about 5689.76 pounds, and in the third holding category about 7460.09 pounds, which reflects the effect of holding capacity on Increase the net revenue per feddan, as it was found that the rate of return for costs in each of the holding categories was about 0.366, 0.469, and 0.620 each of them, respectively. The estimation of the flax production functions of the study sample in the first holding capacity showed that the most important factors affecting the feddan yield of flax are the amount of seeds, the amount of phosphate fertilizer, and the amount of human labor, where the productive elasticity of each of them reached about 0.673, 0.283, and 0.206, respectively, as it reached The total productive elasticity of that capacity is about 1,162, which indicates an increase in the return to capacity, meaning that production in that capacity is in the first stage of production, which is the non-economic stage, and it requires an increase in the size of the stages to reach the second economic stage. The effect on productivity per feddan is the amount of human labor, the amount of automatic work, the amount of nitrogen fertilizer, the amount of seeds, where the productive elasticity of each of them was about 0.462, 0.313, 0.103, and 0.764 respectively, the total productive elasticity of the estimated function reached about 0.016, which indicates the increasing yield Capacity, which also indicates that the production process for that capacity has approached the second stage, which is the economic stage of production. As it appears from the production functions of the third holding capacity that the most influencing factors on the feddan productivity are the amount of seed, the amount of automated work, the amount of human labor and the amount of nitrogen fertilizer, where the productive elasticity for each of them reached about 0.771, 0.263, 0.243, and 0.99, respectively, The total elasticity of the estimated function is about 0.891, which indicates diminishing returns to capacity in that holding capacity, indicating that production in that stage takes place in the second stage, which is the economic stage of production.