Abstract
Abstract. Smallholder farmers form the vast majority of rice producers in Tanzania. Nonetheless, smallholder production is known to exhibit inefficiency in production. This study sought to analyze the determinants of technical efficiency of production of smallholder rice farmers in Tanzania using the stochastic frontier method while ensuring theoretical consistency through monotonicity and quasi concavity checks. Results show that empowerment of the woman, gender, primary occupation, group membership of household head and fertilizer use by the household affect technical efficiency of production.
Keywords. Technical efficiency (TE), TE scores, Monotonicity, Determinants, Tanzania.
JEL. D61, G14, H21.References
Abate, G.T., Francesconi, G.N., & Getnet, K. (2013). Impact of agricultural cooperatives on small holders? Technical efficiency: evidence from Ethiopia. Working Paper, No.50/13, European Research Institute on Cooperatives and Social Enterprises (EURICSE), Trento, Italy. [Retrieved from].
Addai, K.N., Owusu, V., & Danso-Abbeam, G. (2014). Effects of farmer–Based-organization on the technical efficiency of maize farmers across Various Agro-Ecological Zones of Ghana. Journal of Economics and Development Studies, 2(1), 141-161.
Aigner, D., Lovell, C.K. & Schmidt, P. (1977). Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models. Journal of Econometrics, 6(1), 21-37. doi. 10.1016/0304-4076(77)90052-5
Battese, G.E. (1992). Frontier production functions and technical efficiency: A survey ofempirical applications in agricultural economics. Agricultural Economics, 7(3), 185-208. doi. 10.1016/0169-5150(92)90049-5
Battese, G.E. & Coelli, T.J. (1988). Prediction of firm-level technical efficiencies with a generalized frontier production function and panel data. Journal of Econometrics, 38(3), 387-399. doi. 10.1016/0304-4076(88)90053-X
Battese, G.E. & Corra, G.S. (1977). Estimation of a production frontier model: with application to the pastoral zone of Eastern Australia. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 21(3), 169-179. doi. 10.1111/j.1467-8489.1977.tb00204.x
Bhatt, M.S., & Bhat, S.A. (2014). Technical efficiency and farm size productivity-micro level evidence from Jammu & Kashmir. International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics, 2(4), 27.
Carletto, C., Jolliffe, D. & Banerjee, R. (2015). From tragedy to renaissance: Improving agricultural data for better policies. The Journal of Development Studies, 51(2), 133-148. doi. 10.1080/00220388.2014.968140
Coelli, T., & Henningsen, A. (2017). Package ‘frontier’, Accessed: 14th April 2018. [Retrieved from].
Dinar, A., Karagiannis, G. & Tzouvelekas, V. (2007). Evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms' performance in Crete: A nonneutral stochastic frontier approach. Agricultural Economics, 36(2), 135-146. doi. 10.1111/j.1574-0862.2007.00193.x
Farrell, M.J. (1957). The measurement of productive efficiency.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), 120(3), 253-290. doi. 10.2307/2343100
Griffiths, W.E., O’Donnell, C.J. & Cruz, A.T. (2000). Imposing regularity conditions on a system of cost and factor share equations. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 44(1), 107-127. doi. 10.1111/1467-8489.00101
Henningsen, A., & Henning C.H.C. (2009). Imposing regional monotoicity on translog production frontiers with a simple three step procedure. Journal of Production Anal, 32(3), 217-229. doi. 10.1007/s11123-009-0142-x
Kalirajan, K.P. (1989). On measuring the contribution of human capital to agricultural production. Indian Economic Review, 24, 247-261.
Karimov, A. A. (2014). Factors affecting efficiency of cotton producers in rural Khorezm, Uzbekistan: Re-examining the role of knowledge indicators in technical efficiency improvement. Agricultural and Food Economics, 2(1), 7. doi. 10.1186/s40100-014-0007-0
Kidane, A. & Ngeh, E.T. (2015). A comparative analysis of technical efficiency of smallholder tobacco and maize farmers in Tabora, Tanzania. Journal of development and agricultural economics, 7(2), 72. doi. 10.5897/JDAE2014.0616
Koebel, B., Falk, M., & Laisney, F. (2003). Imposing and testing curvature conditions on a Box–Cox cost function. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 21(2), 319-335. doi. 10.1198/073500103288618981
Koirala, K.H., Mishra, A.K., & Sitienei, I. (2015). Farm productivity and technical efficiency of rural Malawian households: Does gender make a difference? Conference Paper, No. 196903 in Annual Meeting of Southern Agricultural Economics Association, January 31-February 3, 2015, Atlanta, Georgia. Accessed: 18th April 2018. [Retrieved from].
Kumbhakar, S.C. & Lovell, C.K. (2003). Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Cambridge University Press. Accessed: 6th August 2018. [Retrieved from].
Lambarraa, F., Serra, T., & Gil, J.M. (2007). Technical efficiency analysis and decomposition of productivity growth of Spanish olive farms. Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, 5(3), 259-270. doi. 10.5424/sjar/2007053-247
Lau L.J. (1978).Testing and imposing monotonicity, convexity and quasi-convexity constraints. In, M. Fuss & D. McFadden (Eds), Production economics: a dual approach to theory and applications. Vol 1. (pp.409-453), North-Holland, Amsterdam.
Manevska-Tasevska, G., Rabinowicz, E., & Surry, R.Y. (2013). Policy impact on farm level efficiency in Sweden: 1998–2008.Working Paper No.2013/6, Agri Food Economics Centre, Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. [Retrieved from].
Mango, N., Makate, C., Hanyani-Mlambo, B., Siziba, S. and Lundy, M. (2015). A stochastic frontier analysis of technical efficiency in smallholder maize production in Zimbabwe: The post-fast-track land reform outlook. Cogent Economics & Finance, 3(1), 1117189. doi. 10.1080/23322039.2015.1117189
Minviel, J.J., & Latruffe, L. (2017). Effect of public subsidies on farm technical efficiency: A meta-analysis of empirical results.Applied Economics, 49(2), 213-226. doi. 10.1080/00036846.2016.1194963
Nchare, A. (2007).Analysis of factors affecting technical efficiency of arabica coffee producers in Cameroon. African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Nairobi, Research Paper, No.163. [Retrieved from].
Nkamleu, G.B. (2004). Productivity growth, technical progress and efficiency change in African agriculture. African Development Review, 16(1), 203-222. doi. 10.1111/j.1467-8268.2004.00089.x
O’Donnell, C.J., & Coelli, T.J. (2005). A Bayesian approach to imposing curvature on distance functions. Journal of Econometrics, 126(2), 493–523. doi. 10.1016/j.jeconom.2004.05.011
Okoye, B.C., Abass, A., Bachwenkizi, B., Asumugha, G., Alenkhe, B., Ranaivoson, R., Randrianarivelo, R., Rabemanantsoa, N., & Ralimanana, I. (2016). Differentials in technical efficiency among smallholder cassava farmers in Central Madagascar: A Cobb Douglas stochastic frontier production approach. Cogent Economics & Finance, 4(1), 1143345. doi. 10.1080/23322039.2016.1143345
O'Neill, S., Matthews, A., & Leavy, A. (1999). Farm technical efficiency and extension. Department of Economics, Trinity College.
Sauer, J., Frohberg, K., & Hockmann, H. (2006). Stochastic efficiency measurement: the curse of theoretical consistency. Journal of Applied Economics, 9(1), 139-165.
Seng, K. (2015). The effects of nonfarm activities on farm households’ food consumption in rural Cambodia. Development Studies Research, 2(1), 77-89. doi. 10.1080/21665095.2015.1098554
Shih, J.S., Harrington, W., Pizer, W.A., &Gillingham, K. (2004). Economies of scale and technical efficiency in community water systems. Discussion Paper 04–15, February, 2004, Resources for the Future, Washington, DC. Accessed: 21st May 2018. [Retrieved from].
Tiedemann, T., & Latacz‐Lohmann, U. (2013). Production risk and technical efficiency in organic and conventional agriculture–the case of arable farms in Germany. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 64(1), 73-96. doi. 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2012.00364.x
Wang, H.J. & Schmidt, P. (2002). One-step and two-step estimation of the effects of exogenous variables on technical efficiency levels. Journal of Productivity Analysis, 18(2), 129-144. doi. 10.1023/A:1016565719882
Watto, M.A. & Mugera, A.W. (2015). Econometric estimation of groundwater irrigation efficiency of cotton cultivation farms in Pakistan. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 4, 193-211. doi. 10.1016/j.ejrh.2014.11.001
