文章基本信息

标题：Irrigation, Technical Efficiency, and Farm Size: The Case of Brazil
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作者：Gabriel A. Sampaio Morais ; Felipe F. Silva ; Carlos Otávio de Freitas 等
期刊名称：Sustainability
印刷版ISSN：2071-1050
出版年度：2021
卷号：13
期号：3
页码：1132
DOI：10.3390/su13031132
语种：English
出版社：MDPI, Open Access Journal
摘要：In developing countries, irrigation can help to decrease poverty in rural areas through increased employment in the agricultural sector. Evidence shows that irrigation may increase farm productivity and technical efficiency. In this paper, we estimate the effect of irrigation on farm technical efficiency in Brazil using the 2006 Agricultural Census dataset on more than 4 million farms. We estimate a stochastic production frontier at farm level, considering potential selection bias in irrigation adoption. We find that farms using irrigation are on average 2.51% more technically efficient compared to rain-fed farms. Our findings also suggest that while small farms are more efficient than medium and large farms, the largest difference in technical efficiency between rain-fed and irrigated farms is among large farms. Our results indicate that policies that seek to support expansion of irrigation adoption has also the potential to achieve greater rural development given the estimated effects estimated in this paper among very small and small farms, which are more than 70% of the farms in Brazil.