Journal of Taiwan Agricultural Research

Author:Shi-Hua Yang, Tarng-Ping Chen and Te-Fang Pan

Abstract:

    The purposes of this study are to evaluate the technical efficiency of wax apples farms and to find out factors that influence the technical improvement of wax apples production significantly. The stochasic frontier production function was used to estimate technical efficiency. Forty-seven wax apples farms were sampled and evaluated based on technical efficiency. Data of eleven factors were fitted with regression analysis. The results showed that the wax apples farms can be fitted better with the Translog function than with the Cobb-Douglas function. The average technical efficiency level was 0.8715. It means that there is still some room of wax apples production efficiency could be improved. Also, the results suggested that the education of wax apples farmers, yield of wax apples per tree, the sale prices of wax apples and the planted area of wax apples per labor-day are main factors affecting the technical efficiency level. Hence, the production technology, farm management, farming training, grade package and brand promotion should be enhanced to raise the technical efficiency.

Key words:Wax apples, Technical efficiency, Stochastic, Frontier production function, Translog function

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