Agricultural Informatization and Technical Efficiency in Maize Production in Zambia

Abstract

The cropland productivity gap between Africa and the rest of the world is widening. Fortunately, increasing farmers’ access to useful agricultural information reduces the costs of searching for information, thereby leading to higher agricultural productivity and sustainability. This study investigates the association between the adoption of mobile phones to collect agricultural information and farmers’ technical efficiency (TE) in Zambia. Different from previous studies, we focus on the actual use of mobile phones by farmers rather than mere ownership. Farmers were selected using a two-stage sampling procedure, and the Cobb-Douglas (CD) production function is adopted to estimate the association using two approaches—the conventional stochastic production frontier (SPF) and propensity score matching-stochastic production frontier (PSM-SPF) model. In both cases, we found that the use of mobile phones is significantly and positively associated with farmers’ TE. However, the conventional SFP model exaggerates the TE scores by 5.3% due to its failure to mitigate biases from observed variables. Regarding the agricultural growth indicators (income and output) related to TE, a close inspection reveals that increasing mobile phone use to close the TE gap between the two groups could result in a 5.13% and 8.21% reduction in severity of poverty and extreme poverty, respectively. Additional research is essential to corroborate the findings and analyze the potential causal mechanisms. Our study provides strong evidence to promote mobile phone use in agricultural production in rural Zambia.

The Determinants of Technical Efficiency of Hazelnut Production in Azerbaijan: An Analysis of the Role of NGOs

“…For instance, in a recent article by Candemir, Özcan, Güneş and Deliktaş [14], technical efficiency estimations are conducted without addressing endogeneity and other biases stemming from unobserved variables. This according to Bravo-Ureta, et al [31] does not give robust estimates, as estimates could be exaggerated as found by Mwalupaso, et al [32]. In another study, Guney [9] presents a discourse on hazelnut production without indicating the productivity levels.…”

“…Considering that hazelnut production takes place in an orchard environment, farmers' understanding of how to produce is more important than attainment of general education [54]. An insignificant and positive sign on education was also found by Mwalupaso, Wang, Rahman, Alavo and Tian [32] and Bozoglu and Ceyhan [67]. Regarding NGO intervention being insignificant, the translog production function (another specification applied as a robust check) discloses consistent results to those in Table 4, implying that no bias is introduced on account of the interaction of the classical inputs.…”

Aging of Agricultural Labor Force and Technical Efficiency in Tea Production: Evidence from Meitan County, China

“…Otherwise, there might be some loss of technical efficiency. Much literature pays attention to the determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture [24,[26][27][28], among which were a growing number of studies focusing on the aging of agricultural labor force [2,9].…”

Factors Contributing to Efficient Forest Production in the Region of the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, China

“…The existing studies have categorized them into natural factors, socioeconomic factors, and resource endowments [7,8]. Therefore, the exploration of the relationship between the production efficiency and its influencing factors can be conducive to maintain and improve the overall efficiency of forest production and management.Production efficiency is usually used to present the performance of a production unit [9]. It is commonly calculated by using the ratio of the actual output to the maximum output conditional on a given input, or the ratio of the minimum input to the actual input conditional on a given output [10,11].…”

“…Production efficiency is usually used to present the performance of a production unit [9]. It is commonly calculated by using the ratio of the actual output to the maximum output conditional on a given input, or the ratio of the minimum input to the actual input conditional on a given output [10,11].…”