With the increase of rubber production, Para rubber farmers in Northeastern Thailand have faced the limited physical and socio-economic conditions that have given rise to the improvement of technical efficiency. This study investigated the technical efficiency of Para rubber farmers. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to collect cross sectional data on 300 farmers. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and stochastic frontier analysis. The results revealed that the variance of gamma and sigma squared of the frontier production function was significant at a level of p = 0.01. All inputs (except chemical fertilizer) are major factors that have influenced the changes in the output of Para rubber production. The mean technical efficiency index for the farmers was found to be 0.573 and the efficiency factors, which were comprised of age of farmers, education, gender and age of the rubber trees, were found to be the significant factors that affected the variation in technical efficiency among the farmers. The policy implication of the study is that technical efficiency of Para rubber could be increased by 42.7% by improving the use of available resources. Thus, the government should give more education about rubber production, including tapping trees and managing farms because this education will impact the knowledge that can be applied to farming techniques in order to enhance efficiency.

<p>Rice combine harvesting is popular among farmers due to a labor shortage and high wage labor. This condition impacts on the rapid expansion of business of rice combine harvester service. The objective of this research was to evaluate the service characteristics of rice combine harvester for farmer and factor affecting the use of combine harvester. Primary data was collected purposively 85 operators and randomly 729 farmers with statistic analysis. Results of the study indicated that the harvesting cost of 798.48 THB/rai for using a combine harvester in wet season is smaller than the cost of manual harvesting of 1,542.17 THB/rai. The important factors affecting the use of combine harvest were farmers’ education, farm size and family size. Net return from this service business is over 250 THB/rai or over 35 % of total profit that it is economic benefit for operators. But, the operators faced high cost of fuel and of repair and maintenance cost due to unskilled operation. Thus, the government should establish a network of harvester service operators as well as encourage more maintenance training for local operator in order to high utilization efficiency in rice combine harvester. Also, the government should support farmer to expand their farm sizes by the establishment of a group farmer to easy access the use of rice combine harvester and should give wider farmer awareness education for higher adoption of combine harvester use.</p>