Exploring the Role of Planting Scale on Productivity and Efficiency: The Case of Rice Farms in Bangladesh

This study intends to investigate the determinants of planting scale choice and its effect on rice farms’ productivity and technical efficiency (TE) by using a national representative sample of 12,590 rice plots in Bangladesh. The stochastic production frontier approach has been employed separately for each planting scale to compare farm performances. It also addresses self-selection in the choice of planting scales by using multinomial endogenous switching regression that corrects potential selection biases for planting scale choice and TE. The empirical results show that the land elasticity was the highest (0.81) for the straight-line planting scale and the lowest (0.70) for the random scale. A critical finding from the self-selectivity variable was that the straight-line planting scale was an appropriate alternative for increasing rice farms’ production and TE in Bangladesh. The straight-line planting scale had 2.8% and 2.0% higher efficiency than the semi-straight-line and random scales. In contrast, the random and semi-straight-line scales had negative associations with rice production. Household head education, land ownership, and improved rice varieties had positive effects, while land fragmentation, farm size, wage labour, and market distance negatively affected the adoption of a straight-line planting scale for rice production. A strong research-extension linkage is essential to motivating farmers to choose the appropriate planting scales and successfully diffuse information at the rural farm level.