A measure for the efficiency of water use and its determinants, a case study of small-scale irrigation schemes in North-West Province, South Africa

Determinants of technical efficiency among cash-crop producers: Evidence from East Malaysia

“…A possible explanation of the positive coefficienct of experiece could be that the farmers have more valuable experience by hands-on learning and tends to affect use of inputs efficienctly. The results of this study are consistent with the findings of the study conducted by [6,20,[23][24][25][26].…”

Impact of the Rural Development Programme Subsidies on the farms' inefficiency and efficiency

“…they should use similar inputs to produce similar outputs. Speelman et al (2008) see the disadvantage in the fact that it is a deterministic method which is susceptible to measurement errors and other noise in the data. Also the assumptions about the returns to scale in the production technology must be made.…”

Smallholder irrigation schemes in South Africa: A review of knowledge generated by the Water Research Commission

“…Among the primary constraints identified by extension staff on 164 of the 302 smallholder schemes, poor management topped the list (50% of the cases); followed by infrastructural problems (15%); water inadequacies (13%); conflict (12%); and theft (7%). This suggests that human (capacity) and social (institutional) resource problems were at the heart of the below-expected performance of smallholder irrigation schemes in South Africa identified by nearly all assessments that were made (Bembridge, 1997;Bembridge, 2000;Kamara et al, 2001;Shah et al, 2002;Machete et al, 2004;iSeneke Developments, 2004;Tlou et al, 2006;Speelman et al, 2008;Yokwe, 2009;Mnkeni et al, 2010). Figure 1 shows the frequency distribution of the command area of smallholder irrigation schemes.…”