Environmental efficiency of transformed farming systems: a case study of change from sugarcane to shrimp in the vietnamese mekong delta

Abstract

Transforming farming systems in the coastal areas is considered as inevitable trend under pressures of climate change. However, the transformation implicitly contains many risks relating to technical aspects and environmental management during production process. Therefore, the study conducted face-to-face interviews with 90 farmers who transformed from sugarcane cultivation to shrimp production recently in Cu Lao Dung district, Soc Trang province in order to evaluate economic performance as well as technical efficiency and environmental efficiencies of such transformed shrimp farming. Regarding to economic performance, the study found that average benefit was 419 million VND per ha. However, the variation of the benefit was quite large, indicating partially the magnitude of risks in shrimp production. The study also found that there were about 91% of farmers that incurred loss at least once. The major causes of the loss were shrimp diseases, low quality shrimp larva, variability of weather and market instability. The average technical efficiency was about 72.74%, suggesting that farmers could increase their output level about 27.26%, given inputs constant. Regarding to environmental efficiency, the average efficiency was about 65.44%, suggesting that shrimp farmers could reduce their environmentally detrimental inputs about 35% at the current levels of normal inputs and output level.