Abstract
To overcome the challenging food safety and security problem, in 2003, the Thai government initiated ‘Good Agricultural Practices’ (GAP) technology. This paper used a sample of 107 small chili farms from the Chiyaphoom province for the 2012 crop year, and data envelopment analysis (DEA) meta-frontier directional distance function technique to answer two questions: (1) Are GAP-adopting farms, on average, more efficient than conventional farms? (2) Does access to GAP technology affect farmers’ decisions to adopt GAP technology? We also developed an ‘indirect’ approach to reduce the potential sample selection bias for small samples. For the dry-season subsample, GAP farms were more technically efficient when compared with non-GAP farms. These dry-season non-GAP farms may not adopt the GAP method because they have limited access to GAP technology. For the rainy-season subsample, on average, GAP farms were more efficient than non-GAP farms at the 5% level. Access to the GAP technology is not a possible reason for non-GAP rainy season farms to not adopt the GAP technology. To enable sustainable development, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) must develop and implement appropriate educational and training workshops to promote and assist GAP technology adoption for chili farms in Thailand.
Highlights
As the world population is increasing, food safety and security have become prominent and pressing issues
Technical efficiency was analyzed for rice farms in Thailand [6,7,8], Vietnam [9,10,11], and Myanmar [12,13]
Rainy-season chili farms in our sample had different experiences compared with dryseason chili farms
Summary
As the world population is increasing, food safety and security have become prominent and pressing issues. Promoting GAP technology may help farmers improve their productive efficiency and yield a win–win situation for farmers, consumers, and the economy. Conventional technology heavily uses chemicals and chemical fertilizers, and this chili produce is contaminated with chemical residues Both characteristics harm the environment and human health and prevent chili farmers from exporting their crop. Empirical findings could guide government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in developing and implementing appropriate educational and training workshops to promote and assist in GAP technology adoption. Farmers from both groups could improve their productive efficiency and the quality of their chili to meet manufacturing and export standards, and, their income.
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