Vegetable production constitutes an important sub-sector of the agricultural economy of KwaZulu-Natal. Most vegetables are cultivated in mixed-cropping types of farming systems. The technical efficiency of vegetable based cropping systems was estimated in order to identify the potential increase in production without incurring additional costs. The factors affecting technical efficiency and con...

Dairy operations today are suffering from narrow profit margins. This has intensified the drive for efficiency. At the same time dairy farmers have to take into account consumers demands such as food safety and quality, zoönotic disease transmission, animal welfare, reduction of the use of medical treatments, and an acceptable environmental impact of livestock production (after Berckmans, 2003;...

Productivity differences between tenant and owner operated farms have often been investigated using traditional methods. All these studies compute the partial productivity differences between the two farm ownership types. This paper takes the analysis one step further by examining the differences in efficiency among these two farm types. A stochastic frontier production function analysis reveal...

In order to assess the technical and economic efficiency of conventional farm businesses a variety of management techniques have been developed. These include gross and net margin analysis and full cost accounting. This paper reviews their effectiveness in organic farming systems and finds that all of the techniques can be useful in helping to assess the economic efficiency of individual enterp...

Traditionally cost-benefit analysis of different farm systems and management strategies, or losses due to diseases, are based on rough estimates made by experts. The purpose of this study is to use panel data to quantify the differences experienced in real life between farmand management systems (fixed sow versus loose sows, one site versus two or multi sites, etc.) and the actual loss due to d...