Study of the Technical Efficiency of Rice Farmers in Iran: a Case of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province

This paper aims at the study of the impact of socio-economic factors on the performance of rice farmers in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad of Iran. The required statistics and data were collected as cross-sectional data in the 2008-09 farming year through questionnaire-interview study with the province's rice farmers and analyzed by frontier production function. The research results showed that return to scale in rice farms is increasing returns to scale () and with a degree of 1.2; i.e. if all factors of production (capital, seeds, machinery, labor, cultivated area and water) increases with a scale of t, rate of production will rise with a scale of t 1.2. t. The mean technical efficiency of the rice farmers is 67.01 percent which has been fluctuated between a minimum of 33.3 to a maximum of 100 percent. Thus, increased Champa rice-growing capacity is about 66.7 percent. Therefore, through an improved technical efficiency of rice farmers it will be possible to reduce this deep gap between the first ranked rice farm and other farms in the province