Cost and environmental efficiency of rice farms in South Korea
利用韩国96个水稻农场2003-2007年的数据，通过数据包络分析发现，提高技术效率可同时降低生产成本和改善环境表现，但转向环境高效运营会使成本平均增加119%，同时减少约69%的水体富营养化潜力。
Abstract We examine cost and nutrient use efficiency of farms and determine the cost to move farms to nutrient‐efficient operation using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with a dataset of 96 rice farms in Gangwon province of South Korea from 2003 to 2007. Our findings show that improvements in technical efficiency would result in both lower production costs and better environmental performance. It is, however, not costless for farms to move from their current operation to the environmentally efficient operation. On average, this movement would increase production costs by 119% but benefit the water system through an approximately 69% reduction in eutrofying power (EP). The average estimated cost of each EP kg of aggregate nutrient reduction is approximately one thousand two hundred won. For technically efficient farms, there is a trade‐off between cost and environmental efficiency. We also find that the environmental performance of farms varies across farms and regions. We suggest that agri‐environmental policies should be (re)designed to improve both cost and environmental performance of rice farms.