Rice is the major crop in Thailand and it will remain so as long as it continues to be the major export crop and the staple food of the Thai population. However, the fact is that, although Thailand is the main rice-exporting country in the world, its rice yields are among the lowest in Asia (Office of Agricultural Economics, 2004a, b). This might imply low productivity and high technical inefficiency in major rice production. In an attempt to resolve this problem, the Thai government has promoted the use of inputs in rice production, such as chemical fertiliser, high-yielding varieties and chemicals, to increase the yields. The total amount of chemical fertiliser that was imported increased from about 1.3 million tonnes in 1985 to 3.9 million tonnes in 2004, with an annual growth rate of 4.6%. The value of imported chemical fertiliser also increased with a higher annual growth rate of 8.7%. The increasing use of chemical fertiliser and chemicals whose prices have been rising continuously has resulted in substantial increases in production costs. ... This paper aims to answer two questions: how has rural credit contributed to the production of rice? and how do agricultural loans from the rural financial institutions affect the technical efficiency of rice farmers? This study is based on data from farmers in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces which are the main areas for major rice production in the Upper North sub-region. The results from this study will be useful for determining the government policies on rural financial institutions. This paper is set out as follows: Sect. 2 provides an overview of the rural financial institutions. Section 3 presents survey data on rice farmers and model specifications. Section 4 discusses the results from the translog stochastic frontier production function. The last section provides policy implications and conclusions.

New agricultural management entities have appeared and been encouraged by the government in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in recent years. Mainstream opinion has stressed the need to take action to overcome the perceived inefficient, small-scale, subsistence smallholder economy that rejects the market economy, has no specialized labor and a low level of technology. However, the question as to whether smallholders are inefficient remains to be substantiated. Smallholder farming households play an important role in the agricultural community in PRC. We believe that smallholder farmers are not representative of inefficient agricultural producers. The smallholder business model, not only shows its tenacious vitality and regenerative ability, but it also plays an important role in the economic and political culture of the nation. We adopt the stochastic frontier analysis framework, which accounts for random errors in the production function, together with technical inefficiency effects that are associated with different management capabilities, to analyze the technical efficiency of smallholder farming households and the impact of their household endowments on technical efficiency of crop production in China. The data used in this paper are from the annual statistical surveys of 17 village-level, fixed-observation points in Anhui province from 2011 to 2014, collected by the Ministry of Agriculture. The sample smallholder farming households considered in this paper have typical significance in terms of both location and economic significance. Using these panel data, we avoid the loss of volatility of variables but utilize the dynamic characteristics of technical inefficiency changes. There is evidence that smallholder farming households are performing quite well, contrary to the findings of previous studies. The level of education, technical training, incidence of a cadre in the extended family, and non-farm incomes have positive and significant impacts on the technical efficiencies of smallholder farming households. However, with the aging of smallholder farming households, increases in loans, increases in total farmland area and greater fragmentation of farmland, the crop production of smallholder farming households tended to be more technically inefficient. From the results of the empirical analysis, we suggest that the government increase investment in agricultural training and rural education, select and train more high-quality village cadres and encourage them to continue to assist in agricultural production of smallholder farming households, establish a unified urban-rural labor market, improve the rural financial credit mechanism so that rural financial institutions will not release loans arbitrarily, and make reasonable arrangements for land development projects.

This paper evaluates the performance of smallholder farmers in three districts of the forest-savannah transition agroecological zone of Ghana and examines the effect of integrated crop-livestock management practices (ICLMPs) on the productivity and technical efficiency of production of small-ruminant outputs of farmers. Using farm-level data collected from a sample of 510 farmers from the Atebubu-Amantin, Nkoranza South and Ejura-Sekyedumase districts, a metafrontier production function model is used to estimate the mean technical efficiencies of farmers in each district and their metatechnology ratios. Small-ruminant outputs of the farmers were significantly influenced by the inputs, herd size, capital, labor, feed and veterinary expenses, in at least one of the three districts and for the metafrontier function. Furthermore, the small-ruminant outputs were significantly and positively influenced by the use of pigeon pea, ash or neem, improved pasture and storage of crop residue. The efficiency of production of small ruminants was affected by ICLMPs such as the use tetracycline, use of ash or neem, and storage of crop residue in one or more of the three districts. The technical efficiency of the crop-livestock farmers was also influenced by their age, gender and education, by their participation in projects, obtaining off-farm income, market information and access to extension advice in one or more of the three districts. The results indicate that there are significant differences in small-ruminant production technologies across the three districts and that the production technology in Nkoranza South district is superior to the ones in use in the other two districts. The results underscore the need for investments in research and extension in developing and disseminating relevant ICLMPs and complementary training that leads to more efficient small-ruminant production and, consequently, increased farm income.

This paper presents a metafrontier production function model for firms in different groups having different technologies. The metafrontier model enables the calculation of comparable technical efficiencies for firms operating under different technologies. The model also enables the technology gaps to be estimated for firms under different technologies relative to the potential technology available to the industry as a whole. The metafrontier model is applied in the analysis of panel data on garment firms in five different regions of Indonesia, assuming that the regional stochastic frontier production function models have technical inefficiency effects with the time-varying structure proposed by Battese and Coelli (1992).

Since 1980, Ethiopia has been struggling to feed its growing population, despite the fact that agriculture is the mainstay of its economy. A number of government initiatives aimed at raising food production and ensuring national food security have made little progress in achieving their objectives. This paper identifies some of the implications of the new agricultural intensification programme, focusing on the technical efficiency and productivity of maize growers in the Harari region of Ethiopia for food insecurity and agricultural development policies. The paper concludes that there is scope to improve the technical efficiency of maize farmers and enhance their socioeconomic situation in the Harari region.

With the aim of improving rural living standards and strengthening the security of crop production, China has adopted “family farms plus cooperatives” as the preferred mode of organization in agriculture. We investigate technical efficiency in crop production comparing family farms that are members of cooperatives, either as core members who have taken investment stakes or common members who have not, with their nonmember counterparts. To allow for heterogeneity in production technology among nonmembers, core members, and common members, we adopt a metafrontier estimation technique. Our data sample consists of 384 family farms in Anhui province for the year 2015. Heterogeneity among family farms, whether members of cooperatives or not, is found to be highly significant. Nonmember farms show the lowest technical efficiency and the widest gap between observed and potential production. By contrast, core members of cooperatives show the highest technical efficiency and the narrowest gap between observed and potential production. We infer that cooperative membership may allow farmers to learn more advanced technology and take advantage of productivity-enhancing practices. We further find that age and education of farm heads contribute to greater technical efficiency.

This thesis is concerned with the specification, estimation, application and testing of stochastic frontier production functions. The majority of the material in this document is derived from seven research papers written over the past four years. The thesis begins with a review of frontier estimation methods, with an emphasis on information relevant to agricultural applications. The two primary methods of frontier estimation, stochastic frontiers and data envelopment analysis (DEA), are described and compared. The influence of data noise is observed to be crucial in the selection of appropriate methods.

This paper uses the concept of a metafrontier to compare the technical efficiencies of firms that may be classified into different groups. The paper presents the basic analytical framework necessary for the definition of a metafrontier, shows how a metafrontier can be estimated using non-parametric and parametric methods, and presents an empirical application using cross country agricultural sector data. The paper also explores the issues of technological change, time-varying technical inefficiency, multiple outputs, different efficiency orientations, and firm heterogeneity.

There is strong evidence that innovation is a primary driver of a nation's economic growth. As Australia continues to compete in the global economy, it is imperative that businesses should be innovative to improve their performance. In this paper, we evaluate the status and main drivers of innovation in small businesses in the food sector in Australia. Discrete choice modelling and bootstrapping procedures are applied to a panel of firm‐level data collected through the ABS Business Characteristics Survey (2006–2007 to 2010–2011 for the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Business Longitudinal Database Confidential Unit Record File) to investigate the factors affecting the likelihood of small food businesses to innovate. Results show that businesses are more likely to innovate if they collaborate, have higher information and communication technology intensity, and use science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. We also found that small food businesses, even at the sub-sector level, do combine different types of innovation when innovating. The propensity to innovate also increases for small businesses that have flexible working arrangements, face moderate‐to‐strong market competition, operate overseas and seek finance through debt and equity. The relative importance of these factors was found to vary between agricultural and non-agricultural food sub-sectors.

This book is concerned with measuring the performance of firms, which convert inputs into outputs. An example of a firm is a shirt factory that uses materials, labour and capital (inputs) to produce shirts (output). The performance of this factory can be defined in many ways. A natural measure of performance is a productivity ratio: the ratio of outputs to inputs, where larger values of this ratio are associated with better performance. Performance is a relative concept. For example, the performance of the factory in 2004 could be measured relative to its 2003 performance or it could be measured relative to the performance of another factory in 2004, etc.