The Effectiveness of the Production of Healthy Rice in Comparison with other Rice Varieties in the Upper Northern Region of Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine the efficiency of the production of healthy rice and that of other varieties grown in the upper northern region, by using Meta-Frontier approach in analyzing the rice production efficiency. This study focuses on rice production of farmers by comparing between healthy rice growers and farmers of other rice varieties about 300 and 900 sampling respectively, in the areas of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Phayao. In analyzing the efficiency used one variable of the output, the quantity of rice products and five input variables namely quantity of seeds, cost of soil nourishment fertilizer, cost of weeding, cost of labor in production, and cost of labor for harvesting. The study found that there were more variables for analyzing the efficiency of other rice varieties of rice than those of the healthy rice. Plus, general rice growers had higher production efficiency than healthy rice farmers (0.9439> 0.8604). However, it seems that they should reduce more production factors, particularly labor in production and that in harvesting. Meanwhile, the overall economy of scale had increased while that of each group appeared to be unchanged. Contribution/Originality: This study is one of very few studies which have examined the efficiency of the production of healthy rice and that of other varieties grown in the upper northern region, by using Meta-Frontier approach in analyzing the rice production efficiency. Abstract: This research aims to examine rice production costs and returns as well as to focus on reducing inputs used by farmers implementing rice transplanting and direct seeding approaches. By studying the optimal use of agricultural inputs, excessive inputs are used to create a model of expected cost and return in terms of the budget procedure. The research result showed that costs and returns of the farmers reducing the production inputs were higher than those of the farmers not reducing their inputs. Simultaneously, the net return of the (cid:12)rst group of farmers was statistically signi(cid:12)cantly lower. However, when the inputs had been reduced, the production cost of rice growers became lower. Also, the return was slightly higher due to the high production quality. Regarding the research (cid:12)ndings, rice growers are suggested that they encourage household members give more importance to rice production in order to increase the potential for rice production with transplanting method which will result in higher production e(cid:14)ciency and higher return. Abstract This paper aimed to analyze the efficiency of rice production methods between transplanting and direct seeding of farmers in the upper northern region, and to find the factors affecting the efficiency of rice production. The study adopted DEA as the benchmarking method in the analysis of the efficiency of rice production by means of Tobit model. The results showed that a number of farmer household invested by themselves to produce the rice production. While own investment influenced negative direction on the efficiency, education level had effect on positive.