The Input-Output Efficiency Of Apple Farmer Households

There are two ways for promoting the growth of apple output: one is increasing the input quantity of production factor, the other is optimizing the combination of production factor and enhancing apple households'input-output efficiency. Under the pressure of resources scarcity and ecological environment deterioration, the key to realize the apple industry's sustainable development is to optimize allocation of resources using existed technical condition and improve input-output efficiency, not relying on extending the input the production factor infinitely. Using DEA-Tobit two-stage Model and a large set of first-hand survey data from apple farmer Households of Luochuan county in Shaanxi Province, this article inquires into the apple farmer households'input-output efficiency condition and influencing factors from the microcosmic angle of view and puts forward the proposal of improving input-output efficiency, which provides theory and empirical reference for the major apple production area to give play to the resource advantage and optimize allocation of resources.On the basis of theoretical analysis of input-output efficiency,this article used the DEA method to evaluation apple farmer household's input-output efficiency, the main conclusions are as follows: (1) On the whole, apple farmer households'input-output efficiency is at a low level, 96% of which are at the stage of increasing returns to scale. As a result, there is big space for efficiency improvement. (2) There is a great difference among the apple farmer households, which indicates that the management ability is irregularity; (3) The average input-output efficiency of the cultivars of Gala, Red star, Qinguan, Fushi are at the stage of increasing returns to scale. Moreover, Fushi's average input-output efficiency is the lowest, in other words, Fushi's growth potential under the certain condition is the biggest.According to the result of apple farmer household's input-output efficiency evaluation and the problem discovered during spot investigation, this article proposes theoretical hypothesis about influencing factors and carries on the empirical test using the Tobit regression model. The result are as follows:(1) Human resources investment like education of householder and technical training, family labor scale, the percent of apple sales income in the family's total income, irrigation condition, apple tree's average age have a marked positive effect on the input-output efficiency of apple farmer households. (2) Land's fragmentation, natural disaster, times of fertilization as well as the environmental conditions of family location have a negative influence on the input-output efficiency. (3) The householder's age, apple planting density, apple commodity rate and credit availability do not show a marked effect.Finally, the article puts forward suggestions to improve input-output efficiency from the level of government and apple farmer households separately, providing reference for advancing the apple industry structure adjustment, optimizing allocation of resources and enhance the input-output efficiency of apple farmer households.(1) Government could strengthen the infrastructure construction, perfect natural disaster defense system, promote the research and popularization of new technology of apple-planting, standardize agricultural commodities market and enlarge the supervision quality. (2) Apple farmer households could strengthen Human resources investment, optimize the structure of apple-planting variety and production factor input to enhance the the economic efficiency.