Thesis (BS Agribusiness Economics) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, May 2019

The goat-raising is significant livestock production among marginalized areas in the Philippines due to less capital and management requirement and diverse derived products. The limited technical knowledge and outdated practices employed in the small-scale backyard farming cause the continuous deficit of supply to the increasing demand of goat products. The profitability and productivity of the farmers are affected. This study aims to determine the costs and returns and level of technical efficiency of backyard goat production of goat farmers. Due to high concentration of goat farmers, Davao region was chosen specifically in areas of Davao del Sur, Davao Oriental and Davao City as the research location. Using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis, the production was estimated with Cobb-Douglas and Trans-log with net return per goat as sold as the output and inputs are set per goat per year: labor in man-days, total cost, forage are in hectares. The total cost and forage are significant to production function as they influence the net return, the sex, educational attainment, forage area tenancy, and herd size are significant sources of technical inefficiency. The mean technical efficiency score of farmers is 0.8776 in which 12.26% needs improvement. The study recommends to provide more focus extension services on female farmers, program on forage cultivation, improvement of goat herd size in each farm, and additional subsidies for production costs especially for the resource-poor farmers.