Technical Efficiency of Ecologically Engineered Rice Production in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam: Application of SFA

Abstract

An overuse of agro-chemicals in rice production has caused serious problems on biodiversity loss, water pollution, public health impacts and yield losses. Recently, the outbreaks of brown-plant hoppers was a great matter of concern. To deal with these issues, the use of ecological engineering was introduced in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam since 2009. However, there were no study on the potential benefits of the model in terms of technical efficiency. Hence, the objective of this study is to estimate and compare the technical efficiency of ecologically engineered rice farmers to those with traditional rice by using stochastic frontier analysis.