How can sedentarised pastoralists be more technically efficient? A case from eastern Inner Mongolia

Technical efficiency (TE) means the effectiveness of production outputs attained for a given level of production inputs. This study examines pastoralist TE and its determinants for 416 pastoralist households from two leagues (prefectures) in eastern Inner Mongolia, a typical rangeland area in China. A one-step stochastic frontier method is applied to analyse data about household livestock production in 2011 to assess opportunities for increasing income and reducing poverty through increased TE. The main results show that pastoralists, in general, did not perform well with currently available technology, with the average TE score just 0.50 out of 1.0. Only about one-fifth (20.2%) of respondents had TE scores >0.7, and the same proportion had a TE score <0.3. More than one-quarter had TE scores in the range 0.3–0.5, and slightly more than one-third had TE scores in the range 0.5–0.7. About 83% of the variation in pastoralist livestock production is explained by the loss of TE. The age of the head of household, available pasture, investment in covered pens and participation in the rangeland rental market were found to influence TE. Encouraging younger pastoralists to enter pastoralism, and enlarging available grazing land through the rangeland rental market or cooperative rangeland use would likely enhance pastoralist performance; promoting investment in covered-pen construction could also improve productivity and alleviate a rangeland degradation cycle, which is pervasive in the study area.