In emerging markets for high-value food products in developing countries, processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of consistent quality. One widely embraced approach is contract farming. But relatively little is known about the appropriate design of contracts,...

This article analyzes the impacts of microbial inoculant (MI) technology, which is a part of integrated pest management, on the U.S. apple production using farm-level data. To test the likely production impacts suggested by agronomic literature, we estimate a pesticide use function and...

This study assessed the technical efficiency of fish farmers in Ibadan metropolis of Oyo State, Nigeria using the stochastic frontier production function analysis. Primary data were collected from 82 fish farmers in Ibadan metropolis. The mean efficiency value was 0.906 with majority (65.9...

The study applies the single-stage modelling stochastic frontier approach to investigate the performance of maize farmers in the Ejura-Sekyedumase District of Ghana. It estimates the level of technical efficiency and its determinants for 306 maize farmers. Findings indicated that land, labour...

Stochastic frontier functions were used to assess the impact of a set of policy and scale factors on the efficiency of broiler, layer and dairy farms in Bangladesh and their implications for poverty alleviation.

Participants in the Louisiana sugar cane industry have provided little information related to the efficiency of sugar processing operations. Using panel data from the population of Louisiana sugar processors, alternative model specifications are estimated using stochastic frontier methods to...

We develop measures of technical and allocative efficiency of producers in marketing certified organic products. A stochastic output distance frontier and the associated revenue share equations are estimated using comprehensive U.S. data on certified organic producers. Farm-level measures of...

Agricultural studies have often differentiated and estimated different technologies within a sample of farms. The common approach is to use observable farm characteristics to split the sample into several groups and subsequently estimate different functions for each group. Alternatively, unique...

Food manufacturers use health claims to signal higher product quality and attract health oriented consumers. However, consumers’ willingness to pay for health-related attributes may not be large enough to repay firms of the high costs associated with developing, certifying, and marketing such...

Research on the efficiency of dairy farming in New Zealand is limited and has focused predominantly on technical efficiency. We contribute to the literature on empirical analysis by examining cost efficiency of New Zealand dairy farms. We construct simplified translog stochastic cost frontiers...