Farm level efficiency of rubber as a perennial crop: a translog production frontier approach

This paper examines productivity of rubber in Peninsular Malaysia in a disaggregated form, since rubber is a perennial crop and grows in phases. Data collection was done on 327 smallholders among five districts of Negeri Sembilan state. However, only 307 observations were used in computing inferential statistics, because the young-age category has been removed due to statistically scanty nature of the sample size. The districts include Seremban, Tampin, Rembau, Kuala Pilah and Jempol. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were computed. The descriptive statistics revealed that 52.3% of the respondents were males, while 47.7% were females. 282 were Malays, while 7 and 2 were Chinese and Indians race respectively. Ninety three percent were married, almost 50% had secondary school certificate while only 2% were diploma holders. With regards to location, 41% ,32%,12.6%, 11% and 3.4% were from Jempol, Rembau, Kuala Pillah, Serembanand Tampinrespectively. The results further revealed that the mean rubber yield in kg/ha for the all-age, matured-age and old-age crops categories were 3,638 kg/ha, 4,611 kg/ha and 1,653 kg/ha respectively. This is an indication that matured-age category was found to be relatively higher in terms of rubber yield per hectare. The study also revealed that the mean technical efficiencies (TE) were 0.87, 0.91 and 0.65 respectively for all-age, matured-age and old-age crops. This means that there is actually a difference in mean TE between the all-age and the matured-age and old-age categories and thus, the study concludes that there is quite a difference between the aggregate and disaggregated forms as regards to both the yield and rubber efficiency. The study recommends that, number of household, tapping experience, farmers’ age and level of education of smallholders should be given more attention to increase efficiency. Also, tapping system of one-half spiral cut and alternate daily tapping (S/2 d2) should be adopted. The study further recommends that the traditional concept of computing efficiency or productivity of rubber and other perennial crops in an aggregated form should be complemented with the disaggregated form as this eliminates any bias and gives meaningful results. Keywords: Efficiency, Parametric, Stochastic Frontier Analysis, Translog and Rubber