Journal of Taiwan Agricultural Research

Author:Shi-Hua Yang* and Te-Fang Pan

Abstract:

    This research attempted to estimate the production efficiency of 150 pineapple farms in Taiwan using investigated data in 2005, and to find out the factors that influenced the production efficiency. BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper) model of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was chosen for empirical study. The result showed that the estimated pure technical efficiency (PTE) was 0.77. Therefore, there is some space for improvement of the efficiency of the individual farm in future. Because there were the significant differences between PTE and the low usage rate of input (the usage rate of inputs was 68.6% on average), it is important to emphasize on control and utilization of the production inputs. Moreover, the estimated scale efficiency (SE) was 0.83. The low rate of the pineapple farms (14.0%) showed that the majority of the pineapple farms could not produce at optimal scale. Besides, the results show that the majority of the pineapple farms are in small scale and in the stage of increasing returns to scale (IRS); hence, the study suggests that the farm scale should be effectively enlarged to improve scale efficiency.

Key words:Pineapple, Production efficiency, Data development analysis (DEA)

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