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Measuring Production and Irrigation Efficiencies of Rice Farms: Evidence from the P unjab P rovince, P akistan
Author(s) -
Watto Muhammad Arif,
Mugera Amin W.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
asian economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.345
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-8381
pISSN - 1351-3958
DOI - 10.1111/asej.12038
Subject(s) - inefficiency , irrigation , production (economics) , data envelopment analysis , water use efficiency , agricultural science , constraint (computer aided design) , business , agricultural economics , environmental economics , economics , agricultural engineering , environmental science , microeconomics , mathematics , agronomy , statistics , biology , engineering , geometry
We employ a non‐parametric approach, data envelopment analysis, to estimate the technical and irrigation efficiency of rice farms in the P unjab P rovince of P akistan. We use a cross‐sectional dataset of 80 rice growers, including 45 tube‐well owners and 35 water buyers. Mean technical efficiency scores show that tube‐well owners and water buyers are operating at fairly high efficiency levels, indicating that access to technology is not a major constraint. However, irrigation inefficiency is pronounced, with water buyers being more inefficient than tube‐well owners. A bootstrap truncated regression is used to investigate the determinants of technical and irrigation efficiency. We suggest that groundwater management policies should be designed to address efficiency enhancing factors such as knowledge of crop water consumption requirement, better credit opportunities, outreach extension services and training programs.