Suchergebnisse

Chemical fertilizer is one of the main inputs in Indian agriculture. The objective of the article is to study the efficiency of chemical fertilizer use in India over five decades (1962–65 to 2003–06). This period extends from the pre-green revolution to the post-reform era. Chemical fertilizer use is not uniform and efficient throughout the Indian states. For the purposes of this study, the districts of four states, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab and West Bengal, have been selected, representing the southern, western, northern and eastern regions, respectively. Data envelopment analysis technique is used to gauge the input-oriented technical efficiency. The results show that there is substantial scope for reducing the use of fertilizer.

Farmers in China and many other developing countries suffer from low technical efficiency of chemical fertilizer use, which leads to excessive nutrient runoff and other environmental problems. A major cause of the low efficiency is lack of science-based information and recommendations for nutrient application. In response, the Chinese government launched an ambitious nationwide program called the &ldquo ; Soil Testing and Fertilizer Recommendation Project&rdquo ; (STFRP) in 2005 to increase the efficiency of chemical fertilizer use. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of this program. Using data from a nationally representative household survey, and using wheat as an example, this paper first quantifies the technical efficiency of chemical fertilizer use (TEFU) by conducting stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), then evaluates the impact of STFRP on the TEFU using a generalized difference-in-difference approach. We found that STFRP, on average, increased TEFU in wheat production by about 4%, which was robust across various robustness checks. The lessons learned from STFRP will be valuable for China&rsquo ; s future outreach efforts, as well as for other countries considering similar nutrient management policies.