Counties performance evaluation of cereal production in Albania

• Author: Silvana Mustafaj - Elfrida Dishmema - Albina Basholli - Brunilda Baraku
• Position: Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania
• Pages: 87-93

Vol. 3 No. 3

November 2017

ISSN 2410-3918

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

87

Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences

IIPCCL Publishing, Graz-Austria

Counties performance evaluation of cereal production in Albania

Silvana Mustafaj

Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania

Elfrida Dishmema

Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania

Albina Basholli

Polytechnic University of Tirana, Albania

Brunilda Baraku

Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania

Abstract

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors of the Albanian economy. Agricultural

production occupies for about 1/5 of the country's GDP. Agricultural production

includes all realized production in all counties of the country. Cereal constitutes a

signifi cant part in agricultural production, which are grown all over the country. The

main cereals cultivated in the country are wheat, maize, rye, barley and oats. The

highest level of cereal production in Albania is reached in low and coastal counties

and the lowest levels of cereal production are reached in mountainous counties. The

production potentials of the agricultural sector are bigger than that. For this purpose

there is a need of fi nding ways and manners to increase agricultural production in

general, which a ects the growth of employment and welfare, economic growth and

poverty alleviation in rural areas. In this context, the counties performance evaluation

related to cereal production and the identifi cation of their productive opportunities in

these agricultural cultures has a big interest. In this paper, the productive performance

of the counties has been evaluated by using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

method as a method for performance evaluation and benchmarking.

Keywords: performance, counties, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).

Introduction

Cereals are one of the most important agricultural products as they serve as basic

food for both humans and animals. Before the 90’s, Albania has reached high levels

in cereal production, because all the required amount of domestic consumption

was produced domestically. Cereal production in the country fell a lot in the early

90’s as a result of abandonment of agricultural land due to migration to the cities or

immigration to other parts of the population living in rural areas. Another reason for

reducing the interest of cereal cultivation in the country was the market’s opening and

foreign products competition with lower prices than the cost of domestic production.

So, the domestic needs of cereals in our country today are supplemented by domestic