Considering the farmer’s decision of quitting cotton plantation due to low economic incentives, the current research is intended to evaluate the economic viability of cotton growers in Punjab. A comprehensively pretested questionnaire was used to gather the information from 240 cotton growers in face-to-face interviews. The cost–benefit ratio was estimated by calculating incurred variable costs, revenue generated, net farm income, and gross margin. The data envelopment analysis was applied to explore the economic, technical, and allocative efficiencies of the cotton producers. The second-stage regression analysis was also conducted to evaluate the socioeconomic factors affecting farmer’s efficiencies by applying the Tobit regression model. The small farmers were found to be most vulnerable group with low returns on investments and low technical and economics efficiencies score. The results also indicate that the financial constraints, difficulty to access agriculture credit, access to extension services, and lack of formal education are the main factors affecting farmer’s efficiency. The government should regulate the input prices and agriculture department should provide formal training to the farmers to adopt better management practices to reduce cost of production.

Considering the growing pressure of the edible oil imports bill on Pakistan’s national accounts, the significance of sunflower cultivation is gaining more attention to meet the domestic edible oil demand. Given the declining area for sunflower production, this study explored the factors of economic and environmental inefficiencies affecting sunflower growers in Pakistan. The study adopted the epsilon-based measure (EBM) model at the first stage and the Tobit truncated regression model at the second stage to precisely estimate the economic and environmental inefficiencies in the data collected from 240 sunflower growers. Results found that out of 240, 69.9% of the sunflower growers are economically inefficient, while the average environmental inefficiency of sunflower growers is 56.3%. The findings further revealed that farmers’ age, cultivated land, and market distance are the driving factors of farmers’ economic and environmental inefficiencies. However, formal education, farming experience, and access to agricultural extension services decreased the farmer’s inefficiencies. Based on the present study’s findings, diverse policy options are presented to address the problem of contraction of the area under sunflower production.