Evaluation of technical, allocative, and economic efficiency in rice production; A case.study on rice farmers in brunei darussalam

Abstract

Many studies have shown that increasing efficiency is the best option in increasing output compared to introducing new technology, in the short run. This paper attempts to investigate the efficiency level of individual rice farmers and determinant of inefficiencies among rice farmers in Brunei. The empirical result shows that the means of technical, allocative and economic efficiencies were at 76.3%, 65.7% and 53.1% respectively. This suggests that there is a considerable room for improvements in increasing rice productivity through better use of available resources given the state of technology. This study shows that improvements in irrigation and soil fertility may reduce overall inefficiencies among rice farmers in Brunei. Factors like farm size, age, gender, experience and training have a significant impact in increasing/decreasing farmer's efficiency. Another noteworthy variable is that, farmers who joined cooperatives or associations are more efficient than farmers who do not.