This study assesses the sustainability of agricultural practices in Western Newfoundland by evaluating the technical, allocative, cost, scale, and environmental efficiencies of 15 local farms using data envelopment analysis. The findings reveal that while most farms demonstrated high technical efficiency (average score: 95%), notable inefficiencies persist in the allocative, cost, and environmental efficiency dimensions. Key issues include labor inefficiency, chemical fertilizer overuse, and suboptimal farm scale, whereas effective land management and quality seed use were identified as major drivers of productivity. A detailed case study highlights a farm achieving full efficiency across all metrics through sustainable practices such as no-dig methods, permaculture, rainwater harvesting, and composting, demonstrating how regenerative strategies can enhance both economic and ecological performance. The study also uses stepwise regression to identify education, farm experience, and farm type as significant factors influencing efficiency outcomes. These results underscore the potential for targeted interventions, technology adoption, and policy support to improve farm performance and advance sustainable agriculture in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. By integrating multidimensional efficiency metrics, this research provides actionable insights for optimizing resource use, reducing environmental impact, and strengthening the resilience of regional agrifood systems.

Precision agriculture technology (PAT) is often viewed as a potential driver of future efficiency gains in farming. Using within-farm variation from an unbalanced panel of Kansas farms, this study examines the impact of PAT bundles on efficiency in generating gross revenue. On average, we find little evidence that these technologies improve efficiency. However, among less efficient farms, several bundles are linked to notable efficiency gains, underscoring the importance of accounting for farm heterogeneity.

This study introduces a data-driven benchmarking method to assess the relative price and profit efficiencies of cattle auction sales. Transaction inefficiencies represent the divergence between observed sales and their corresponding maximum feasible value. Data envelopment analysis is used to assess market efficiencies and to identify the optimal array of animal characteristics based on peer comparisons. In Texas, about half of the evaluated transactions were inefficient. Furthermore, by modifying some of the observed attributes, sales prices could increase by 23% and profits improve by 74%. Efficiency results can be used to develop effective value-added management practices and educational programs.

Rigorous methods have recently been developed for statistical inference of Malmquist productivity indices (MPIs) in the context of nonparametric frontier estimation, including the new central limit theorems, estimation of the bias, standard errors and the corresponding confidence intervals. The goal of this study is to briefly overview these methods and consider a few possible improvements of their implementation in relatively small samples. Our Monte-Carlo simulations confirmed that the method from Simar et al. (2023) is useful for the simple mean and aggregate MPI in relatively small sample sizes (e.g., up to around 50) and especially for large dimensions. Interestingly, we also find that the “data sharpening” method from Nguyen et al. (2022), which helps in improving the approximation in the context of efficiency is not needed in the context of estimation of productivity indices. Finally, we provide an empirical illustration of the differences across the existing methods.

Using data envelopment analysis, we examine the efficiency of Canada's universal health care system by considering a set of labour (physicians) and capital (beds) inputs, which produce a level of care (measured in terms of health quality and quantity) in a given region. Data from 2013–2015 were collected from the Canadian Institute for Health Information regarding inputs and from the Canadian Community Health Survey and Statistics Canada regarding our output variables, health utility (quality) and life expectancy (quantity). We posit that variation in efficiency scores across Canada is the result of regional heterogeneity regarding socioeconomic and demographic disparities. Regressing efficiency scores on such covariates suggests that regional unemployment and an older population are quite impactful and associated with less efficient health care production. Moreover, regional variation indicates the Atlantic provinces (Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick) are quite inefficient, have poorer economic prospects, and tend to have an older population than the rest of Canada. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions suggest that the latter two factors explain about one-third of this efficiency gap. Based on our two-stage semi-parametric analysis, we recommend Canada adjust their transfer payments to reflect these disparities, thereby potentially reducing inequality in regional efficiency.

We examined the effect of using input and output quantities as compared with costs and revenues when estimating farm-level efficiency scores and ranking. We used farm-level data from the 2015 Ethiopia Rural Socioeconomic Survey (ERSS) where production inputs and outputs in quantities as well as monetary units could be distinguished. Average technical efficiency scores of 72.2% and 68.6%, respectively, were found for analysis based on quantities and on costs and revenues. Efficiency ranking differed significantly. Results suggest that type of data compilation introduces bias to the efficiency assessment and that conclusions may be unclear, which complicates policy advice.

This study sought to investigate whether animal health and welfare state and changes were associated with technical efficiency in a sample of 34 Austrian dairy farms. Health and welfare were assessed twice using the Welfare Quality® (WQ) assessment protocol for dairy cattle. Following a baseline welfare assessment, farm-specific health and welfare planning was conducted on the farms. This included the identification, selection and implementation of measures in housing and management that aimed at improving health and welfare states. One year after implementation, farms were reassessed to evaluate changes in health and welfare states and consequences for farms’ technical efficiency were analysed using the Malmquist index. Our results indicated that farms with a higher health state (WQ principle score ‘Good health’) achieved higher technical efficiencies. However, we could not show that changes in the welfare state within a one-year period affected technical efficiency: across all farms, technical efficiency remained stable and Malmquist indices (indicating efficiency and technological change) could not be explained by the different welfare scores. Nevertheless, our study showed data envelopment analysis to be a valuable method for analysing the relationship between animal welfare and farm success and our results indicate substantial potential synergies between these two aspects.

A future sustainable dietary pattern for Japanese is yet undefined. This study aimed to explore more sustainable Japanese diets that are nutritious, affordable and with low greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and particular emphasis on cultural acceptability. A newly developed data envelopment analysis (DEA) diet model was applied to 4-d dietary record data among 184 healthy Japanese men and 185 women volunteers aged 21–69 years. Alternative diets were calculated as the linear combinations of observed diets. Firstly, for each individual, four modelled diets were calculated that maximised cultural acceptability (i.e. minimise dietary change from observed diet), maximised nutritional quality assessed by the Nutrient-Rich Food Index (NRF), minimised monetary diet costs or minimised diet-related GHGE. The final modelled diet combined all four indicators. In the first four models, the largest improvement was obtained for each targeted indicator separately, while relatively small improvements or unwanted changes were observed for other indicator. When all indicators were aimed to optimise, the NRF score and diet-related GHGE were improved by 8–13 % with the lower monetary cost than observed diets, although the percentage improvement was a bit smaller than the separate models. The final modelled diets demanded increased intakes for whole grains, fruits, milk/cream/yogurt, legumes/nuts, and decreased intakes for red and processed meat, sugar/confectioneries, alcoholic and sweetened beverages, and seasonings in both sexes. In conclusion, more sustainable dietary patterns considering several indicators are possible for Japanese, while total improvement is moderate due to trade-offs between indicators and methodological limitation of DEA diet model.

U.S. dairy production has been consolidating into large-scale confinement operations. Large numbers of small- to medium-scale dairies have disappeared in the last two decades, and many more are disappearing. This article analyzes small- to medium-scale dairy operations in Maryland during 1995–2009 for changes in technology and efficiency through a novel two-stage DEA approach to examine productivity changes. Conventional confinement dairy operations and management-intensive grazing dairies are analyzed separately. The results show that both dairy systems have become more productive on the technological frontiers, yet the rate of technical change for graziers was less than half the rate for confinement.

In this study we use data envelopment analysis (DEA) and an extension of DEA called value efficiency analysis (VEA) to explore the “production” of quality of life within counties in the mid-Atlantic region and the extent to which production frontiers and efficiency differ between rural and urban counties. These methods allow us to identify counties that are inefficient in their quality of life production, and to rank (using DEA) those counties according to their distance from a performance standard established by other observed counties, or (using VEA) by a single unit designated as “most preferred.”

Technical efficiency for cotton growers is examined using both stochastic (SFA) and nonstochastic (DEA) production function approaches. The empirical application uses farm-level data from four counties in west Texas. While efficiency scores for the individual farms differed between SFA and DEA, the mean efficiency scores are invariant of the method of estimation under the assumption of constant returns to scale. On average, irrigated farms are 80% and nonirrigated farms are 70% efficient. Findings show that in Texas, the irrigated farms, on average, could reduce their expenditures on other inputs by 10%, and the nonirrigated farms could reduce their expenditures on machinery and labor by 12% and 13%, respectively, while producing the same level of output.

Efficiency analysis is used for assessing links between technical efficiency (TE) of livestock farms and animal diseases. However, previous studies often do not make the link with the allocation of inputs and mainly present average effects that ignore the often huge differences among farms. In this paper, we studied the relationship between exposure to gastrointestinal (GI) nematode infections, the TE and the input allocation on dairy farms. Although the traditional cost allocative efficiency (CAE) indicator adequately measures how a given input allocation differs from the cost-minimising input allocation, they do not represent the unique input allocation of farms. Similar CAE scores may be obtained for farms with different input allocations. Therefore, we propose an adjusted allocative efficiency index (AAEI) to measure the unique input allocation of farms. Combining this AAEI with the TE score allows determining the unique input-output position of each farm. The method is illustrated by estimating efficiency scores using data envelopment analysis (DEA) on a sample of 152 dairy farms in Flanders for which both accountancy and parasitic monitoring data were available. Three groups of farms with a different input-output position can be distinguished based on cluster analysis: (1) technically inefficient farms, with a relatively low use of concentrates per 100 l milk and a high exposure to infection, (2) farms with an intermediate TE, relatively high use of concentrates per 100 l milk and a low exposure to infection, (3) farms with the highest TE, relatively low roughage use per 100 l milk and a relatively high exposure to infection. Correlation analysis indicates for each group how the level of exposure to GI nematodes is associated or not with improved economic performance. The results suggest that improving both the economic performance and exposure to infection seems only of interest for highly TE farms. The findings indicate that current farm recommendations regarding GI nematode infections could be improved by also accounting for the allocation of inputs on the farm.

Technical efficiency measures are calculated for ratite producers using data envelopment analysis. Regression analysis is then used to determine producer characteristics that are likely to lead to higher technical efficiencies. Results indicate that the most technically efficient ratite producers in Louisiana are not producing at the benchmark efficiency level advocated by the industry. Producer experience with other livestock, specialization, and labor are factors likely to lead to higher technical efficiency. These results are expected to hold for most new, alternative livestock enterprises.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries has conducted several buyback programs to reduce harvesting capacity in fisheries. These programs have attempted to maximize capacity reduction given a fixed budget. However, restructuring issues have not been considered. We explore the possibility of satisfying three different buyback objectives. We examine the black sea bass trap fishery and determine the number of vessels given different allowable catch levels and objectives of maximizing technical efficiency, capacity utilization, and vessels in the fishery. We find considerable variation in the number of vessels allowed to remain in the fishery given the different objectives.