Farm environment, farmer knowledge and technical efficiency: An investigation among upland corn farmers in Bukidnon, Philippines

Using a panel data (1994-1999) of upland corn farmers' production and soil conservation practices, this paper investigates the influence of farmers' technical and ecological knowledge on their technical efficiency (TE). TE was derived from two types of translog production frontiers where the first equation did not include environmental factors as independent variables and the second did. In the first function, it was assumed that the farms faced the same environment thus, it measures production efficiency as influenced by both management and environment. In the second function, farms are assumed to face different environmental conditions, thus, measuring the technical efficiency due to crop management alone. The difference between the two efficiency measures of farms would then account for the influence of environmental factors.