Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1978

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Agricultural Economics

Major Professor

M. B. Badenhop

Committee Members

Joe A. Martin, John R. Brooker, Keith E. Phillips

Abstract

The objectives of this study were: (1) to assess the capability of small family farms to increase swine production through increasing the efficiency of using available resources; (2) to determine the effect of variations in selected management and efficiency factors in swine pro-duction on income potentials; and (3) to interpret the findings so they relate to agricultural policy for the Northeast Thailand livestock industry. The analysis was conducted under various resource and price situations for five representative farms in five agro-economic zones. Linear programming techniques were used to examine the organization of farm resources that would maximize farm income under limited resource situations, varying capital arrangements, different land resource mixes, and varying feed and swine prices. The objective function to be maximized was the net farm return over variable costs. Results of this study are: (1) Capital and land were the most limiting factors for increasing farm income in Northeast Thailand. (2) Capital was the most limiting factor for the swine enterprise. Without credit being made available to farmers, four out of five representative farms did not produce any swine. (3) By providing 30,000 baht of credit to individual farmers, the net returns to most of the representative farms would increase by more than 100 percent, primarily as a result of substan-tial increases in swine production. (4) Increasing both capital and land resources resulted in increases to net returns. Increasing both land and capital resources yielded higher net returns than increasing capital alone. (5) An increase of 30,000 baht of credit and 50 percent more land land per farm resulted in the May-August labor requirements becoming the limiting production factor. (6) Feed cost accounted for more than 10 percent of the total swine production costs in 1974-75. Swine production was very sensitive to variation in feed prices. As feed prices increased to 2.50 baht per kilogram, swine production farms dropped from the optimum solution for most of the representative farm situations. (7) When the price of swine was varied from 13.06 to 20.06 baht per kilogram, the enterprise organization remained stable. In other words, swine pro-duction responded very little to increases in the price of swine. (8) The findings suggest that there is considerable potential to improve farm incomes in Northeast Thailand by increasing Swine production. An adequate and sound production credit policy is needed for farmers to increase their farm incomes and/or swine production.

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