Overuse Of Inputs Research Articles

Shock, risk attitude and rice farming: Evidence from panel data for Thailand

Rice is one of the most important crops for food security and rural livelihoods in many developing countries in Asia. However, the current rice farming practices heavily rely on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that pose a significant threat to the environment. Further, the overuse of inputs might lead to the wastage of resources. Therefore, this research examines the impact of shocks experienced by farmers on their risk attitude, input use, and technical efficiency in rice farming. We use a balanced panel dataset of 1220 rice households from Thailand collected in 2013 and 2017 and employ a fixed-effects estimation with instrumental variables to account for endogeneity concerns. Our results show that fertilizers and pesticides are risk-decreasing inputs, which means rice farmers, who are more unwilling to take risks, tend to apply more fertilizers and pesticides. Adverse shocks affect rural households’ risk attitudes, leading to over applications of fertilizers and pesticides and, therefore, reducing farming efficiency. We suggest that policies providing crop insurance and enhancing farmers’ awareness on proper input application are critical to mitigate the adverse impacts of shocks and reduce the inefficient use of these chemical inputs.

Ample room for reducing agrochemical inputs without productivity loss: The case of vegetable production in Uruguay

Vegetables are commonly produced with high inputs of pesticides and fertilisers to boost production and meet cosmetic market standards. Yet, reports on the relationships between agrochemical inputs and crop productivity are scattered and an overview is missing. We assessed the relationship between pesticide and nutrient inputs and crop productivity for five vegetable crops in the south of Uruguay at field and farm level and explored the relation with farm resource endowment. We analysed crop yield and input use for tomato, onion, sweet potato, and strawberry with a dataset of 82 farms and 428 fields constructed between 2012 and 2017. Clear crop-specific patterns in pesticide and nutrient input levels were found, despite considerable variation across fields within the same crop. Strawberry and long cycle tomato had the greatest pesticide input regarding of the number of applications (20 and 18, respectively) and pesticide load (21 kg AI ha−1). Cumulative nutrient inputs were greatest for long cycle tomato (1127 kg ha−1). The relationships between inputs and yield were weak or non-significant, indicating inefficiencies and overuse of inputs, and there was no agronomical rationale for input use. We found substantial variation in management practices between fields and farms. In several cases, 21% of the fields and 17% of the farms producing onion, strawberry and tomato, attained relatively high yield levels with limited input levels. Yield and input use levels were not related to farm resource endowment. Our findings question the efficiency of the current high levels of pesticide and nutrient inputs in Uruguayan vegetable systems. The inputs may pose environmental and human health risks and in most cases did not increase yields. Learning from positive deviant farmers in combination with guided farm redesign, high-quality extension services, and use of context-specific knowledge and technologies may equip farmers to use more sustainable management practices.

Changing Ground: Handling Tensions between Production Ethics and Environmental Ethics of Agricultural Soils

Soils are an essential element in sustainable food systems and vital for ecosystem services. Soils are degrading, because of urbanization, poor soil management, depletion and mining, over-use of inputs and impacts of climate change. Poor soil management resulted from short-term yield maximization caused by changes in land tenure, property rights and land use. We argue for soil protection based on the concept of soil telos defined as the combined purposefulness in agricultural production and terrestrial ecosystem optimization. It includes the right of mankind to use soils, provided norms and values are respected based on the soil’s usefulness, its natural purposefulness and its right to be protected (including its physical, chemical and biological cycles). Finding a sustainable balance between these values and rights on the one hand and the need to use living soils for agricultural production on the other hand requires a new approach to soil management based on widely accepted norm- and value-driven decisions on unavoidable trade-offs. Reconciling man-made telos and natural telos, requires (i) empowering the soil to achieve its man-made telos (e.g., by restoring degraded soils); (ii) empowering the soil to achieve its natural telos (e.g., by restoring water courses); (iii) raising awareness about the need to reconcile these two teloi (e.g., by acknowledging rights of soils); and (iv) monitoring tools to assess successful reconciliation (e.g., by evaluating soil health).

Excess capacity, production technology and technical inefficiency in hospitality sector

Abstract This article examines the effects of excess capacity on the production cost and technical inefficiency of hotels and restaurants in Norway. The dataset includes a daily unbalanced panel of 94 hotels and restaurants from 2003 to 2014. To accommodate inefficiency, we use an input distance function (IDF). Inefficiency in the IDF means that if inputs are overused by k% then production cost is also increased by k%. We also allow inefficiency to differ across locations and regions by using them as determinants. The results indicate that excess capacity considerably affects the cost and increases inefficiency. The marginal effect on cost increases with excess capacity, but the effect on inefficiency sets in when it exceeds 50 percent. Furthermore, we find less overuse of inputs by firms in small metro towns and the Northern region causing them to be more efficient [except for the Southern and Western regions] than their counterparts.

Analyzing the variations in cost-efficiency of marine cage lobster aquaculture in Vietnam: A two-stage bootstrap DEA approach

ABSTRACTThis study measures cost-efficiency and its determinants for 353 marine cage lobster farms in Vietnam using a two-stage bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA). In the first stage, the bootstrap DEA approach was used to obtain bias-corrected technical, allocative cost-efficiencies for the farms. Then, the bias-corrected cost-efficiency scores were regressed on a set of explanatory variables using a bootstrapped truncated regression. The results show that substantial cost-inefficiency occurs in lobster aquaculture due to the overuse of inputs, which, given the prevailing input prices, are also used in inappropriate ratios. Cost-efficiency is shown to be significantly impacted by the age of the farmer, total cage volume and by variables affecting the production environment such as the cage cleaning, distance to the nearest farms and the presence of other discharges into the marine environment.

The application of best management practices increases the profitability and sustainability of rice farming in the central plains of Thailand

There is a need to increase the resource use efficiency and sustainability of rice production in the intensive lowland irrigated rice growing areas of Thailand where farmers face challenges such as the overuse of inputs that cause negative environmental effects, rising input and labor costs, declining rice farm gate prices, and water scarcity. Since 2012, a set of integrated best management practices based on Cost Reduction Operating Principles (CROP) has been promoted to rice farmers by the Thailand Rice Department. Through replicated farmer participatory field trials, we evaluated the performance over three seasons of three integrated best management packages that included CROP recommendations, CROP+alternate wetting and drying (AWD), and CROP+drum seeder (DS) technology and compared these with standard farmer’s practice (FP). We also provide an economic and productivity assessment of the large-scale (160–800ha) application of CROP practices across eight sites in the Chao Phraya river basin. In the field trials, farmers that applied CROP practices reduced fertilizer inputs by a mean of 50–64% per season with no yield penalty and were able to increase their net income versus FP by a mean of 26% across all three seasons. The CROP+DS treatments also reduced seed rates by 60–67% and consistently showed the largest benefits over FP, with increases in mean net income per season in the range of 29–46%. Due to water shortages in the dry season, all treatments followed forced-AWD. However, even with limited water supply, high yields were still attained across all plots, giving farmers the assurance that yields can be maintained with AWD practices. Results from the large-scale application of CROP practices showed farmer groups reduced costs by 6–36% (x¯ =17%) and increased net income by 21–131% (x¯=79%) when compared with the same season in the previous year. The results of these studies indicate that through an increase in income and a decrease in inputs that cause negative environmental impacts, the adoption of improved agronomic practices can enhance the sustainability of intensive rice production.

Estimating indirect allocative inefficiency and productivity change

Building on the method used in previous indirect production studies, we construct an indicator of indirect output allocative inefficiency. Our indicator equals the difference between a revenue-constrained directional input distance function and a directional input distance function that depends on outputs, rather than revenue. The indicator measures the overuse of inputs that occurs when firms do not choose a revenue maximizing mix of outputs. Adding a time dimension allows productivity change to be measured. In an empirical illustration of our method we find that Japanese banks use, between 2% and 7%, too many inputs because bank outputs are inefficiently allocated.