The Study On Rice Production Technical Efficiency And Its Determinants In Cambodia

Rice is the most important food crop in Cambodia and its production is the most organized food production system in the country.Thus,it is of interest to examine the efficiency of rice production,the main objective of this dissertation is to measure the technical efficiency(TE)of rice production in Cambodia.Furthermore,the study was also trying to identify core influencing factors of the Cambodian rice production TE at both national and household level,in order to explain the possibilities of increasing productivity and profitability of rice by increasing efficiency gradually,and also identify what technical progress policy should be recommended to help decision-makers to increase the rice productivity in Cambodia,by using translog production function through Stochastic Frontier Analysis(SFA)model.Four-years dataset generated from the Royal Government of Cambodia's document “Profile on Economics and Social” of all 25 provinces between 2012 and 2015 was utilized for the national analysis,while in the analysis at household-level,the primary three-years data(2013,2014,and 2015)collected from 301 rice farmers in three selected districts of Battambang province by structured questionnaires was applied.The results indicate that level of rice output in Cambodia varied according to the different level of capital investment in agricultural machineries,total rice actual harvested area,and technically fertilizers application within provinces,while level of household rice output varied according to the differences in efficiency of the production processes,production techniques,total annual rice actual harvested land,and technically application of fertilizers and pesticides of the farmers.The overall mean TE of rice production was estimated at 78.4%(at the nationallevel)and 34%(at household-level),indicates that rice output has the potential of being increased further by 21.6%(for national production)and 66%(for household)at the same level of inputs and technology if farmers had been technically efficient.However,the TE of rice production recorded a-7% decreasing rate at the national-level and-14.3% at the household-level due to highly affected of natural disasters and various environmental and social factors during the study periods.Decomposing of SFA model reveals that enlarging capital investment at provincial level into agricultural machineries,expansion of rice actual harvested area,and technically improvement of fertilizer application are main input factors for rice production development in Cambodia at both national and household-level.Furthermore,pesticide is another important input factor for improving household's rice production.Harvested area had the highest elasticity among all input factors of rice production in Cambodia(at both national and household-level).Thus,development of irrigation facilities,irrigation systems and good water management practices might be the key factors for enlarging rice cultivated area through multi-cropping systems.More importantly,irrigation systems are also playing the crucial role as the disasters prevention devices in most cases.Additionally,production techniques,technical skills and amount of agricultural supporting staffs are being as the most important influencing factors of national rice production in Cambodia.The core influencing factors lead to decreasing TE of household's rice production are frequently occurrence of natural disaster(i.e.droughts,floods,and insects),insufficient higher education level of household's head,family size and reduction of rice production area for other crops' cultivated area,while the main influencing factors that lead to increasing TE are enlargement of irrigated area,increasing in number of plot area and the sex of household's head(especially female head).