Study of Production Efficiency and Maize Farmers’ Incomes in Phetchabun Province

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) to evaluate the production efficiency of maize farmers. And 2) to study factors affecting maize farmers' incomes. The samples in this study were 100 maize farmers in Mueang District and Khao Kho District, Phetchabun Province. Data were collected by using a questionnaire. This research applied the Stochastic Nonparametric Envelopment of Data model (StoNED) to analyze production efficiency of maize and linear regression model to study factors affecting maize farmers' incomes. The findings showed that the production efficiency score of the highland farmers was 0.442 or 44.2 percent and the production efficiency score of the lowland farmers was 0.573 or 57.3 percent, indicated that the highland farmers have lower productivity than the lowland farmers, and the highland farmers have higher production costs than the lowland farmers. In addition, factors affecting maize farmers' incomes depend on the farmers' land can be used as collateral for loans, lowland farmers, farmers have equal or higher education than compulsory and farmers have reduced loans with statistically significance at 0.01 level. Therefore, the government should encourage farmers to grow crops suitable for highland and integrated farming, as well as the government should encourage the expansion of education opportunity to smart farmers who can increase production efficiency and increase farmers' incomes.