An Assessment of Agricultural Production Efficiency Using the DEA Model in a Transect Area along the National Highway 204 in Jiangsu Province
基于DEA模型的江苏省204国道样带区农业生产效率评价

With the implementation of reform and opening up policies, the development of agriculture and rural areas are experiencing a transition period, characterized by the shift from the traditional and single agricultural development modes to the modern and integrated agricultural development modes and from planned rural economy to the market economy system, particularly over the eastern coastal developed areas. It is essential to improve agricultural resources use efficiency for modern agricultural development. The present study about improving agricultural production efficiencies would provide meaningful reference to capture major agricultural development trends and to quantify their influences on the whole economic development. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model is a quantitative evaluation method to reliably evaluate agriculture production efficiency. In this paper, the model was adopted to evaluate the agriculture production efficiency in a typical region along the national highway 204 in Jiangsu Province, China. Seven indexes depicting agriculture production inputs and outputs in 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2007 were selected, i.e., the cultivated area, the total power of agricultural machinery, the rural electricity consumption, the irrigated area, and the cross output value of farming. The results are shown as follows; 1) Since the late 1970s, the agriculture production efficiencies has decreased by the year 1990 and then increased since year 2000. In year 1980, the average value of agriculture production efficiencies across the whole region peaked, showing a value of roughly 0.9679. In 1990, it was found to be the lowest, with a value of 0.9322; 2) The agricultural efficiencies of the counties in the middle areas were higher than that in the south and the north except Rugao County. The interannual variations in agricultural efficiencies were relatively large in the south and north regions. There was no pronounced relationship between the levels of comprehensive agricultural efficiencies and the levels of regional economic, scientific and technological developments; 3) Since the 1980s, of all fifteen counties, Guannan, Binhai and Dongtai counties have always showed effective agriculture productions. However, Xiangshui County generally exhibited ineffective productions primarily due to inadequate output or excessive input in the arable land, workers, and mechanization. To this end, a series of measures should be taken to direct agriculture sustainable development here in the future. In Xiangshui County, the agriculture technology efficiency was found to be relatively high whereas the scale efficiency was always low. In other counties, the agriculture production efficiencies showed large differences. The agriculture production efficiencies can generally reflect overall agriculture development policies, management modes and technological development over the study region in the past thirty years. It is necessary to further study agricultural produ