Rice is the most important food crop in Cambodia and its production is the most organized food production system in the country. The main objective of this study is to measure technical efficiency (TE) of Cambodian rice production and also trying to identify core influencing factors of rice TE at both national and household level, for explaining the possibilities of increasing productivity and profitability of rice, by using translog production function through Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model. Four-years dataset (2012-2015) generated from the government documents was utilized for the national analysis, while at household-level, the primary three-years data (2013-2015) 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 varied according to the different level of capital investment in agricultural machineries, total actual harvested area, and technically fertilizers application within provinces, while level of household rice output varied according to the differences in efficiency of production processes, techniques, total annual harvested land, and technically application of fertilizers and pesticides of farmers. The overall mean TE was estimated at 78.4% (national-level) and 34% (household-level), indicates that rice output has the potential of being increased further by 21.6% (national production) and 66% (household) at the same level of inputs and technology if farmers had been technically efficient. The TE also recorded -7% decreasing rate at the national-level and -14.3% at household-level due to highly affected of natural disasters and various environmental and social factors during the study periods.
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Subject: Business, Economics and Management - Economics
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