Adoption of Improved Soybean Varieties and Differences in Technical Efficiency Between Improved and Local Soybean Varieties in Southern Shan State, Myanmar

Ei Thazin Soe,Yoshifumi Takahashi,Mitsuyasu Yabe

doi:10.5539/jas.v12n8p55

Abstract

This study determined the factors influencing the adoption of improved soybean varieties and examined the technical efficiencies of improved and local soybean varieties production in Southern Shan State, Myanmar. For this study, data from a sample of 337 respondents were collected by employing a multi-stage random sampling method. Logit model was adopted to determine the factors influencing the adoption of improved soybean varieties. Additionally, a stochastic production frontier was used to examine technical efficiencies of improved and local soybean varieties. Results show that factors that positively and significantly influence the adoption of improved soybean varieties are education, market access, extension access and training access. Examination of technical efficiency reveals that labor, fertilizer, machinery, and use of pesticide and harvester are inputs that significantly contribute to improving production efficiency among the improved variety farmers while seeds, labor, and fertilizer are significant inputs of local soybean production. On average, the estimated yield of the improved soybean varieties is 1.51 t/ha, which is higher than the yield of local soybean varieties grown at 0.88 t/ha. It was also revealed that improved soybean varieties had a relatively higher level of mean technical efficiency (85.04%) than local varieties (70.13%) and significantly different at 1% level. The results show that improved soybean production is more efficient than local soybean production. Therefore, government and non-government organizations should improve and provide market access, efficient and effective extension services and training to encourage farmers to adopt improved soybean varieties.

Highlights

Myanmar is an agricultural country, and the agriculture sector forms the backbone of its economy
Logit model was used as an analytical tool to determine the factors affecting the adoption of improved soybean varieties because of its simplicity and mathematical convenience (Greene, 2002)
About 79% of the improved growers belonged to training on soybean production while only about 42% of local variety growers belonged to training on soybean production and “training” means the farmers who got improved training like use of optimal amount of inputs, improved growing methods, post-harvest technology, pest management technology, etc

Summary

Introduction

Myanmar is an agricultural country, and the agriculture sector forms the backbone of its economy. Myanmar’s agriculture sector including the livestock sector, contributed to 28.6% of the total GDP, 25.5% of the total export earnings, and employed 61.2% of the labor force in 2015-2016 (MOALI, 2016). According to the primary objective “enhancing productivity in Agriculture” of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation (MOALI), the government of the Union of Myanmar has given high priority to improve the productivity of soybean in recent years, as one of the exportable pulses and as an oil-seed crop to attain self-sufficiency in oil consumption. Chickpea, butter pea, green gram, black gram, pigeon pea, kidney bean, cowpea, lab lab bean, sultani, and sultapya are the major pulses grown in Myanmar. The major exportable varieties of pulses are black gram, green gram, pigeon pea, soybean, butter bean, cowpea and kidney bean

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