The present study investigates how the farmers in the state are using their inputs in rice cultivation. The productivity of rice would depend on various factors, viz. fertility of the land, rice variety, methods of cultivation, applications of chemicals and fertilizers, level of farm mechanization, irrigation facilities, rainfall, etc. A relationship between production and inputs used is developed in this study at the farm level by using cross section data of 160 farmers in the state from the Field Survey data. The farm specific frontier production model is used to examine the relationship between the combination of inputs used and production in rice cultivation in the state. The study covered eight villages from Thoubal and Bishnupur districts of Manipur, four villages in each district. Stochastic Frontier Production Function was derived from the Translog production function, and estimated the potential levels of yield of rice for the farmers included in the observation. The estimated potential levels of yield lying along the frontier function were compared with the actual production levels. The stochastic frontier production function is also used for the estimation of Technical Efficiencies. Majority of the farmers in the sample survey were operating at a moderately high level of Technical Efficiency, i.e. 53(33.12%) and 43 (26.88%) out of the 160 farmers are operating at an efficiency class of (0.7, 0.75) and (0.75, 0.8) respectively. Whereas, 36(22.5%) farmers use the inputs at a very low efficiency level, and only 7(4.37%) farmers can employed the inputs at a high efficiency level. Yield gap was highest in the case of villages in Bishnupur district at an average of 1096 kg per hectare. The average yield gap for the villages in Thoubal district was found at 995 kg per hectare. The maximum yield gap in the survey of 160 farmers was found at 1572 kg per hectare. The overall yield gap stood at around 1045 kg per hectare.

Keywords : Stochastic Frontier Production Function, Translog production function, Technical Efficiency, yield gap.