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Soil conservation practices and production efficiency of smallholder farms in Central China

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to evaluate and analyze the impact of adoption of soil conservation practices (SCPs) on the technical efficiency of smallholder rice producers in Central China. We address self-selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity problems by estimating a switching regression model for the adoption decision function and separate stochastic production frontiers for SCP and Conventional farms while allowing for production inefficiency. SCP farms exhibit statistically higher average technical efficiency than Conventional farms. Education, extension services, membership in cooperatives, access to credit, and alternative income sources are positively and significantly associated with technical efficiency for both groups. Conventional farms display higher partial output elasticity for land, while only SCP farms show significant elasticity for capital.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 16CGL038). We also thank the anonymous reviewers whose constructive and invaluable comments improved the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Zhihai Yang & Ning Yin

  2. Institute of Agriculture and School of Agriculture and Resource Economics, The University of Western Australia M089, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

    Amin W. Mugera

  3. College of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872, China

    Yumeng Wang

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  1. Zhihai Yang
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Correspondence to Zhihai Yang.

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Yang, Z., Mugera, A.W., Yin, N. et al. Soil conservation practices and production efficiency of smallholder farms in Central China. Environ Dev Sustain 20, 1517–1533 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-017-9951-7

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