Coconut yield response analysis in Davao Province, Philippines
2009
Aragon, C.T. | Trumata, R., Philippines Univ. Los Baños, College, Laguna (Philippines). Coll. of Economics and Management
This paper discusses the coconut yield response to various explanatory variables using multiple regression analysis on data from Davao Province for crop year 2007. The Cobb-Douglas production function was estimated using Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) method. The explanatory variables included the total number of bearing trees per hectare, the amount of fertilizer applied per hectare, labor use per hectare, age of coconut bearing trees, variety and coconut intercropping. Results of the multiple regression analysis showed that the total number of bearing trees per hectare, amount of fertilizer applied per hectare, age of the coconut bearing trees, and practice of coconut intercropping significantly and positively affected coconut yield measured in nuts per hectare in the study area. The regression coefficient of fertilizer was also the production elasticity of fertilizer in a Cobb-Douglas production function. The production elasticity of fertilizer of 0.168 implied that a 1% increase in the amount of fertilizer applied would increase coconut yield by 0.168% holding other factors constant. The coconut farmer-respondents applied inorganic and organic fertilizers. The sum of the production elasticities of all production inputs included in the model (0.689) was the returns to scale. Since the sum of the production elasticities was less than one, the production function exhibited decreasing returns to scale. This means that if all the production inputs included in the production function were increased by 1%, coconut yield would increase by 0.689%. The positive regression coefficient of coconut intercropping indicates that this farm practice increased coconut yield compared to coconut monocropping. This could be explained by the higher mean rate of fertilizer applied by coconut farmers who practiced intercropping (230.81 kg/ha) as compared to those who practiced coconut monocropping (192.88 kg/ha). Policy recommendations in this paper include the continuous promotion by the Philippine Coconut Authority of yield-augmenting technologies on farm practices such as coconut intercropping and fertilization of coconut trees using inorganic and low-cost organic fertilizers like NaCl or table salt.
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