Measuring Beef Cattle Efficiency in Australian Feedlots: Applying Technical Efficiency and Productivity Analysis Methods

Intensive livestock systems differ from most pasture-based systems in that managers exert much greater control over the production cycle and the quality of animals entering the system. Consequently, technical inefficiencies among animals tend to be much more easily eradicated. Nevertheless, a range of factors could still cause both technical inefficiency and variations in productivity between animals. These factors are the focus of analysis in this study of a beef cattle feedlot system operating under experimental conditions. Technical efficiency and productivity analyses usually focus on the activities of firms or institutions using inputs to produce outputs, and the differences between them (Fleming et al. 2006). In this paper, we report on the efficiency with which physical characteristics of individual lot-fed beef cattle are combined with conventional inputs to produce a final product with several attributes. Data on 214 animals across seven breeds were used to estimate a stochastic input