Abstract

Despite the enormous diversification Turkey has made, agriculture still remains the backbone of its economy. Most of the successes Turkey’s economy has chalked came in the last 15 years; after 2000. The agricultural contribution to both gross domestic product and employment fell within this period. The answer to the state of the sector is not found in its contribution to gross domestic product or employment but the progress in its total factor productivity growth. This is defined as that part of agricultural output growth that is not explained by changes in factors of production. Like all scientific procedures, there is no one way of estimating total factor productivity growth. Considering the advantages and disadvantages methods possess over one another, it is always logical to apply more than one technique on the same data set to establish a range within which the results can be established. We settled on Data envelopment analysis malmquist productivity index and the growth accounting approach. We gathered data on agricultural output and ten inputs at the national, from 2000 to 2014. They were simultaneously applied on our data. The total factor productivity of Turkish agricultural sector grew at 28.8%, with an annual growth rate of 2%.

Key words: Data envelopment analysis, growth accounting, malmquist productivity index, total factor productivity growth.