Technical efficiency of rice production in the delta of the Vu Gia Thu Bon river basin, Central Vietnam

The Role of Knowledge in Sustainable Agriculture: Evidence from Rice Farms’ Technical Efficiency in Hanoi, Vietnam

“…This study found that during the period 1991-1999 the average technical efficiency of the rice sector in Vietnam was only 0.592, due to the low-level impacts of the natural condition and the machinery used. Other studies found an average efficiency score of 0.634 in 2003 [22], 0.816 in 2006 [21,29], 0.630 in 2012 [30], 0.860 from 1985 to 2006 [31] or 0.810 from 2010 to 2015 [32]. Although some of those studies did examine determinants of rice production efficiency such as gender or age, not even one emphasized the impact of knowledge, especially formal versus informal, on efficiency and sustainability.…”

“…The five inputs presented in Table 2 are commonly used in the rice efficiency literature and include labor, land size, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides [24,29,31,32]. It was clear that different farms used different amounts of inputs to produce different outputs (see Table 2) and, therefore, it was important to analyze their efficiency (and determinants) to improve sustainability.…”

Paddy in saline water: Analysing variety-specific effects of saline water intrusion on the technical efficiency of rice production in Vietnam

“…Saline water intrusion, which is a significant threat to rice production in Asian deltas (Pedroso et al, 2018), has major regional and global food security implications (Khong et al, 2018). The increasing salinity of coastal deltas can be attributed partly to the rising of sea levels and the increasing frequency of drought events as a result of global climate change (Seal and Baten, 2012;Wassmann et al, 2004).…”

“…A farmer is technically efficient if the farm unit uses the least amount of input (input minimisation) to produce a unit of output or produces the maximum amount of output from a given amount of input (output maximisation). The two competing models for determining efficiency at the farm household level are (1) the stochastic production frontier (SPF) model (Battese and Coelli, 1995;Pedroso et al, 2018;Sharma et al, 1999;Tzouvelekas et al, 2001;Wadud and White, 2000) and (2) data envelopment analysis (Bravo-Ureta et al, 2007;Coelli et al, 2002;Rios and Shively, 2005). This study uses the SPF model to discover the impact of salinity on rice production, using a case study in Central Vietnam.…”

“…This study uses the SPF model to discover the impact of salinity on rice production, using a case study in Central Vietnam. An existing study (Pedroso et al, 2018) that took an SFA (stochastic frontier analysis) approach to estimate TE (of rice production) in Central Vietnam used a proxy variable approach, that is, the operation time of irrigation pumps to represent the amount of salinity. Our study utilises laboratory-measured values of the electrical conductivity (EC) of soil samples to represent the salt content and is therefore scientifically more robust than the previous approach.…”