The role of farm size has recently come to the forefront of agricultural development debates. Agricultural development policy often focuses on small farms given evidence of their role in poverty reduction and of higher yields. Yet policy has also focused on large farms due to their share of...

Using household survey data from Ethiopia, this paper evaluates the impact of agricultural cooperatives on smallholders' technical efficiency. We utilize propensity score matching to compare the average difference in technical efficiency between cooperative farmers and similar independent...

The interest in promoting food and water security through development projects has led to the need to evaluate the impact of these projects. This study evaluates the impact from transitioning to a modern irrigation technology. Deciding to adopt or not an alternative irrigation technology...

Supermarkets are gaining ground in the agri-food systems of many developing countries. While recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector, impacts on productivity and efficiency have hardly been studied. We use a meta-frontier approach and combine this with propensity...

This study examines technical efficiency and productivity growth of Greek livestock farms participating in the 1994 European Union Farm Credit Program (1994-EU-FCP), i.e. regulation 2328/91. The farm-level economic data set used in this paper consists of two different groups of livestock farms,...

The article analyzes the effect of failing to control for differences in land types (defined by position on a low scale toposequence) on estimates of farm technical efficiency for rice farms in eastern India. In contrast to previous research, we find that farms appear to be considerably more...

Productivity and efficiency are key performance indicators of improved seeds. Efficiency differences explain part of the variation in productivity. Improved seeds may affect efficiency because farmers often do not apply inputs at optimum. Improved seeds therefore not only directly affect...

This paper investigates a number of factors influencing technical efficiency of Greek farms participating in the 1994 European Union farm credit program. Technical efficiency measures are obtained within the framework of a parametric stochastic frontier. Factors showing a positive effect on...

The article analyzes how controlling for differences in land types (defined by position on a low scale toposequence) affects estimates of farm technical efficiency for rice farms in eastern India. Contrasting previous research, we find that farms are considerably more technically efficient when...

Automation has always played a significant role in the productivity and efficiency of agriculture. This paper explores the role of automation on farms' technical efficiency (TE) in an expanding dairy sector. We use a representative sample of Irish dairy farms that includes detailed data on...