Measuring farmers' dynamic technical and udder health management inefficiencies: The case of Wisconsin dairy farms

摘要

This study measures the dynamic technical and udderhealth management inefficiencies of a sample ofWisconsin dairy farms. Udder health management inefficiencyis defined as a farmer’s failure to achieve lowerlevels of milk somatic cell counts compared with thoseof the best-practice farmers within the sample. Thestudy proposes the treatment of somatic cell count asan undesirable output. We measured inefficiency usinga dynamic directional distance function that accountssimultaneously for the expansion of desirable outputsand investments in capital assets, and contraction ofundesirable output and variable inputs. In a secondstep, a bootstrap truncated regression was used to analyzefactors that cause differences in dynamic technicaland udder health management inefficiencies. Resultsshowed that the sample farmers had considerably higherudder health management inefficiency scores thantechnical inefficiency scores. The results of the secondstageanalysis indicated that technical inefficiency wasinfluenced by summer precipitation and farmers’ financialcharacteristics, and was regionally heterogeneous.Udder health management inefficiency was affected bysummer temperature and nonfarm income. By rankingfarms in this study in terms of technical and udderhealth management inefficiency, we allowed inefficientfarms to compare their performance with that of theirefficient peers, and thus identify targets for productionand udder health management improvement efforts.Finally, although our study focused on farmers’ performanceswith respect to udder health management,the proposed modeling framework can be applied tothe management of other animal diseases and welfareconditions.