Description

Abstract: Using a panel data (1994-1999) of upland corn farmers’ production and soil conservation practices, this paper investigates the influence of farmers’ technical and ecological knowledge on their technical efficiency (TE). TE was derived from two types of translog production frontiers where the first equation did not include environmental factors as independent variables and the second did. In the first function, it was assumed that the farms faced the same environment thus, it measures production efficiency as influenced by both management and environment. In the second function, farms are assumed to face different environmental conditions, thus, measuring the technical efficiency due to crop management alone. The difference between the two efficiency measures of farms would then account for the influence of environmental factors.

To assess factors affecting technical efficiency ratings, an OLS function was estimated where the independent variables included farmer attributes including his/her ecological and technical knowledge ratings. The knowledge ratings were derived from the respondents’ scores in a knowledge test conducted by the researchers in 1999.

Results of the study showed that on the average, the technical efficiency of farms with and without consideration of the environmental factors were 49.6% and 45.2%, respectively. The difference of 4.4% can be attributed to the influence of environment to production efficiency. Crop management accounts for 50.4% of technical inefficiencies. Farmers’ TE was significantly explained by the following: a) average education of the farmer and her/his spouse; b) family labor force; c) distance of the farm from the national road; and d) the farmers’ technical knowledge. The ecological knowledge of farmers did not yield significant results although this was found to be positively affecting TE.