Determination of environmental effects on production efficiency of agricultural demonstration zones

Abstract

Aim: The present study aimed to solve the problems that the production efficiency of national modern development area, and the influence of environment effect on agricultural production efficiency. Methodology: Based on the input-output data of 51 modern agricultural demonstration zones in Shandong Province in 2015, a three-stage DEA model was used for study. In the first stage, the traditional efficiencies were calculated depended on the original inputs and outputs, and input slacks were evaluated. In the second stage, the impacts of external environment and statistic noise were removed by SFA model, and inputs were adjusted. At last, the third stage efficiencies were calculated depended on the result of SFA model. Results: The results show that under the influence of environment effect and random error factors, the agricultural production efficiency measured before and after the adjustment of input factors had changed obviously. Farmers' income level, urbanization level, financial support level and rural informatization level have significant influence on the input factor redundancy. Compared with the results of the first and third stage DEA model, the average technical efficiency of demonstration zone increased from 0.79 to 0. 83, the average pure technical efficiency increased from 0.90 to 0.91, and the average SE increased from 0.88 to 0.90. Interpretation: According to the best conditions to improve the efficiency of agricultural production, the demonstration zones should combine their own characteristics and policy-driven force, make rational allocation of agricultural production factors, improve the level of agricultural technology, promote the reform of production methods, and optimize the development environment.