This essay assesses the relationship between farm size and productivity. Both parametric and nonparametric methods are used to derive efficiency measures. Smaller farms are found to have higher net farm income per hectare, and to be more technically efficient, than larger farms. JEL Classifications: Q12, O12

efficiency is defined as a concept that determines the input output ratios in an economic system. data envelopment analysis method is a useful tool to estimate the efficiency of a unit. the purpose of this study was to estimate technical efficiency and to determine return to scale of holstein cattle farms in guilan province. therefore, the information including the number of labor and dairy cow...

To establish effective and efficient control measures for bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) in Japan, a pilot survey on persistently infected (PI) animals in dairy farms was conducted. A total of 5,949 cattle from 79 farms in 11 prefectures were tested; seven cattle in six farms were identified as PI animals. The proportion of farms with PI animals in Japan was calculated as 7.6% (95% confidence inte...

trend towards farm consolidation, it is also imThe purpose of this paper is to measure the portant to know if large farms are more techextent of technical inefficiency among a nically efficient than smaller ones. Finally, it sample of Illinois grain farms using the corshould be noted that the method developed rected ordinary least squares method. Instead here can be easily applied to farm data ...

The technical efficiencies of a sample of extensive Iranian cattle farms collected by Ministry of Agriculture were analyzed using a nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. Mean pure technical efficiency in a DEA model in which all variables were normalized with the number of cows was 0.79, indicating that there is ample potential for more efficient input utilization in cattle farmi...

optimum working life of tractor and farm machinery employed in potato production in hamadan province was assessed through data envelopment analysis. an input oriented model was applied to determine the optimized machinery system. in this model inputs were the lifetime of tractor as well as seven involved machines including moldboard plow, potato planter, chemical fertilizer spreader, tractor mo...

This study applied a non-parametric method to analyze the efficiency of farmers, discriminate efficient farmers from inefficient ones and to identify wasteful uses of energy in order to optimize the energy inputs for broiler production. Data were collected from 44 broiler farms in six villages in Yazd province (Iran) by using a face-to-face questionnaire performed in January– February 2010 peri...

One of the reasons for the success of the agricultural sector in the developed countries is regulate the size of the farms, because it helps to scale economy of production. Considering that the size of agricultural production units should be specifically determined for each product and in each area, the aim of this study is to determine the optimum size of rice farms in the Fereydounkenar count...

This paper surveys recent results in game theory and cooperative control and highlights their implications for the problem of optimizing energy production in wind farms. One such result is a simple payoff-based learning rule that is completely decentralized and leads to an efficient configuration of actions in virtually any distributed system. We demonstrate that this learning rule can be used ...