Hồ Thanh Tâm
Koji Shimada

Abstract
The study aims to empirically investigate the technical efficiency of rice farming in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Observational data were obtained from the in-depth interviews with 352 rice farm households in three provinces of the Mekong Delta. The results from the stochastic frontier analysis reported that the overall mean technical efficiency of rice farming is 77％ which implies that, on average, farm households have the potential to increase their rice production by 23％ given the same level of inputs and technology. In addition, the estimated return-to-scale computed as the sum of coefficients from the CobbDouglass production frontier model is 0.3801 implying that rice farms in the Mekong delta are operating at decreasing returns to scale. Furthermore, the findings revealed that performance of adaptation response, agricultural extension services, the area of farm, and geographical location at both provincial level and micro-level (e.g. access to water source) are key influencing factors of rice farming inefficiency in the Mekong Delta.

Key words: agriculture, efficiency, rice production, stochastic frontier analysis.