Economic efficiency of intensive and semi-intensive shrimp production system in the Mekong River Delta

Abstract

    Economic efficiencv was estimated from the Cobb-Douglas profit frontier function, using thedata from the sur\ey on 398 tiger-shrimp farm households in the Mekong Delta. The averageyield of the intensive'semi-intensive farming model was estimated at 3.2 ton/ha/crop. Given thatthe average costs of production and the output price of a kilogram of shrimp were HLI thousanddongs and 168.6 thousand dongs. respectively, farmers earned a profit of 57.5 thousanddongs per kilogram. The estimation results of the profit function .showed that the average levelof economic efficiency of the farmers was 49%. As many as 50% of farmers had the level lowerthan 50%. Given the inefficiency, the average profit loss of a farm was estimated at 263 milliondoiigs/ha/crop. Therefore, the potential for increasing the profits from shrimp farming are great.Economic efficiency was also found to be dependent on household resources and technical featuresof the farms.