scholarly journals Economic Efficiency in Organic Farming: Evidence from Cotton Farms in Viotia, Greece

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vangelis Tzouvelekas ◽  
Christos J. Pantzios ◽  
Christos Fotopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Allocative Efficiency ◽  
Farm Size ◽  
Stochastic Production Frontier ◽  
Production Frontier ◽  
Organic Farms ◽  
Lower Efficiency ◽  
Stochastic Production ◽  
Low Efficiency ◽  
Farm Types

AbstractUsing recent advances in the stochastic production frontier framework, this paper presents an empirical analysis of technical, allocative and economic efficiency of a sample of organic and conventional cotton farms located in Greece. The results suggest that both farm types in the sample examined are technically, allocatively and economically inefficient. Farmer's age and education and farm size are important factors in explaining differentials in efficiency estimates. In comparative terms, organic farms exhibit lower efficiency scores vis-à-vis their conventional counterparts in terms of technical and economic efficiency; regarding allocative efficiency both farm types are almost equally inefficient. Low efficiency scores in both types of farming may be attributed to the respective intervention policies of the last 20 years.

Measuring Technical Efficiency of the Smallholder Crop Farms Using Stochastic Production Frontier Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 101852912110652
Author(s):  
Mercy Ebere Ndubueze-Ogaraku ◽  
Anil Graves
Keyword(s):  
Technical Efficiency ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Nutrition Status ◽  
Farm Size ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Positive Sign ◽  
Stochastic Production Frontier ◽  
Production Frontier ◽  
Stochastic Production

Agricultural productivity in Africa is the lowest in the world with many households not being able to feed themselves. In Africa, women play a major role in agriculture sector constituting about 70–80 per cent of the labour force there. Regrettably, their farm productivity is relatively low mainly due to their inefficient use of farm inputs, which has a serious implication for their socio-economic condition as well as health and nutrition status. With this backdrop in mind, the study investigated the technical efficiency (TE) of the female crop farmers in Niger Delta, Nigeria. Stochastic production frontier approach and ANOVA models were applied to analyse the primary data collected on the 216 female farmers randomly selected from 18 communities of the 3 states in the Delta. It has been found that the farm size and the quantity of labour positively influence TE of these farmers. However, farmer’s age shows a negative sign implying a decrease in technical inefficiency in age whereas the years of schooling shows a positive sign implying an increase in inefficiency with schooling thereby a resulting decrease in TE with schooling. Farm efficiency level in Delta and Akwa Ibom States was not significantly different. However, TE level in both Delta and Akwa Ibom States was significantly different from Rivers State. Since, the age of farmers showed positive influence on TE, farmers should form group and organise regular meetings to enable share knowledge and experiences on the efficient use of farm resources in the Niger Delta Region, Nigeria.

scholarly journals Economic Analysis of Smallholder Maize Producers: Empirical Evidence From Helmand, Afghanistan

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
Hamidullah Elham ◽  
Jiajun Zhou ◽  
Mouhamadou Foula Diallo ◽  
Shakeel Ahmad ◽  
De Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Production Efficiency ◽  
Allocative Efficiency ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Mobile Internet ◽  
Farm Size ◽  
Stochastic Production Frontier ◽  
Tobit Regression ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Agriculture Sector ◽  
Low Efficiency

Since war started at the end of 2001, the economy was severely devasted in Afghanistan, especially for the agriculture sector. Maize is the third most important cereal crop in Afghanistan, but the productivity of maize has a declining trend which may be caused by low efficiency of maize farmers nowadays. This study examines the production efficiency of maize producers and its important factors with the cross-sectional data form a multi-stage sampling survey of 250 maize producers in Helmand province in 2019. With the adoption of stochastic production frontier (SPF) model and production cost function, the paper gets the estimations of the average technical efficiency (0.737), allocative efficiency (0.65) and economic efficiency (0.568). The inputs, including land, labor, seed, fertilizer and pesticide/weedicides, have significant impacts on maize production and most of the farms exhibit an increasing return to scales. In addition, Tobit regression was applied to identify the influential factors of the production efficiencies for maize producers and the results indicate that education, family size, farm size, farming experience, contact to extension services and access to credit have significantly influence on the efficiency level. Finally, the study suggests that government should take some initiatives, such as extending the agricultural extension service, ensuring supply of high quality seeds and sufficient fertilizer with affordable prices and economical provision of mobile internet facility in remote areas, which will enhance the productivity and efficiency of the farmers and ultimately boost up their economic welfare and livelihood.

scholarly journals TECHNICAL AND SCALE EFFICIENCIES OF U.S. GRASS-FED BEEF PRODUCTION: WHOLE-FARM AND ENTERPRISE ANALYSES

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERDIKUL QUSHIM ◽  
JEFFREY M. GILLESPIE ◽  
BASU DEB BHANDARI ◽  
GUILLERMO SCAGLIA
Keyword(s):  
Household Income ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Returns To Scale ◽  
Distance Functions ◽  
Farm Size ◽  
Farm Income ◽  
Optimal Size ◽  
Stochastic Production Frontier ◽  
Production Frontier ◽  
Stochastic Production

AbstractA stochastic production frontier approach was used to estimate input distance functions for U.S. grass-fed beef (GFB) production. Average technical efficiencies of 0.84 and 0.79 were found for U.S. GFB whole farms and enterprises, respectively. Producer education level, experience, farm size, annual net farm income from the GFB operation, annual net household income from off-farm sources, and regional differences are the efficiency drivers of U.S. GFB farms. Increasing returns to scale were found for U.S. GFB farms. Our results suggest that U.S. GFB farms can be scale efficient if the optimal size of the operation is greater than approximately 100 GFB animals.

scholarly journals Rural extension and technical efficiency in the Brazilian agricultural sector

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Carlos Otavio de Freitas ◽  
Felipe de Figueiredo Silva ◽  
Marcelo Jose Braga ◽  
Mateus de Carvalho Reis Neves
Keyword(s):  
Technical Efficiency ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Farm Size ◽  
Productive Performance ◽  
Stochastic Production Frontier ◽  
Production Frontier ◽  
Entropy Balancing ◽  
Agricultural Census ◽  
Stochastic Production

In this paper, we identify the effect of rural extension on the productive performance of Brazilian agricultural establishments, using technical efficiency as a measure of farm performance. The data used is drawn from the microdata of the 2006 Agricultural Census, accessed directly from the IBGE secrecy room. For this, we use an approach that combines the stochastic production frontier, considering selection bias in the adoption of rural extension (Heckman’s approach) and entropy balancing. We find that rural extension increases efficiency in the use of the productive inputs, with more technical efficiency found among adopting producers than non-adopters. When considering the differences according to farm size, an even greater effect is observed for larger producers. In addition, public rural extension generates higher technical efficiency scores than those obtained by privately-operated establishments.

scholarly journals Land Tenure and Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Tea Producers: The Case of Ya’An City, China

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Abrham Tezera Gessesse ◽  
Ge He
Keyword(s):  
Technical Efficiency ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Farm Size ◽  
Stochastic Production Frontier ◽  
Production Frontier ◽  
Tenure Security ◽  
Tea Production ◽  
Stochastic Production ◽  
The Impact

70 percent of the world and 80 percent of China’s tea production produced by smallholder farmers. However, the tea production per unit area significantly unchanged in the past decades. Understanding factors affecting the technical efficiency of smallholder tea producers is very important to maximize tea production. Aimed at examining the impact of land tenure security and land certification on smallholder tea producers’ technical efficiency, this paper employs the Cobb- Douglas Stochastic Production Frontier (CD-SPF) and Translog Stochastic Production Frontier (TL- SPF) methods for Maximum Likelihood Estimate (MLE) with cross-sectional data collected from 161 randomly selected tea farm plot households in Ya’an city, China. We found that an 1 mu (0.067 ha) increase in the tea farm size will produce a 1.086 tea yield advantage for smallholder tea farmers. We also found that the values of input-output elasticity of land size, household income and labor decrease in turn with 0.144, 0.105 and 0.010 respectively. The results show that farm size is a more crucial input for tea production than income and labor. Moreover, we identify the determinations which enhance the technical efficiency of smallholder tea producers such as land certification, land tenure security age, education, farming experience, total farm size holding, chemical fertilizer, plot steepness and plot distance from home and find that the elimination of land tenure insecurity through land registration and certification makes a clear difference in that. We therefore recommend that tea farmland need to expand and enlarge for better production through comprehensive land consolidation program. We also suggest endorsing the land certificates of all land holders as this will help improve land tenure security, enhance technical efficiency and promote the tea production of smallholder producers.

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