Technical efficiency and corn farming productivity: A stochastic frontier analysis of small-scale farmer in Indonesia

Abstract

Corn is one of the strategic agricultural commodities in Indonesia. West Java is one of the corn production centres in Indonesia and the province with the highest corn productivity nationally. The high productivity of corn farming in West Java is interesting for further study. This paper examines factors affect corn production and how far is the level of efficiency in the use of input in corn production of small-scale farmers in West Java. The study employed a quantitative approach and a cross-sectional survey. The Cobb–Douglas production function and trans-log function were used in estimating the productivity of input, while the technical efficiency was analyse using Stochastic Production Frontier. The results show that land and seed were the most influential factors on corn production. The estimation result from Stochastic Frontier Model showed that variable of land, seed, hired labour and family member, statistically significant impact on technical efficiency of corn production. Moreover, the estimated average technical efficiency of corn farming was approximately 72% with more than 70% of corn farmer had efficiency above 60%.