Impact of natural disasters on the efficiency of agricultural production: an exemplar from rice farming in Sri Lanka
Sajeevani Weerasekara, Clevo Wilson, Boon L. Lee, Viet‐Ngu Hoang
Abstract
This paper is an extension of the current literature on the impact of climate induced natural disasters on the agricultural sector and the first empirical study that investigates the impact of natural disasters on technical efficiency (TE) of rice (also known as paddy) production in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Severity and intensity of disasters were measured using data on a number of different natural disasters. Data for 22 districts in Sri Lanka representing two rice growing seasons and three agro-ecological regions for the 18 year period from 2000 were collected. The study employed a stochastic production function approach to examine technical efficiencies of different districts and different agro-ecological regions. The results reveal that drought and flood have a significant negative impact on the TE of rice production and that droughts have had the most severe impact. The disasters have decreased the TE of rice production by 2–5% on average. This study highlights the need to change the policies and resource allocation currently based on the traditional knowledge and beliefs about production efficiency during different seasons and in different agro-ecological regions. Such changes need to reflect the global trend of greater climatic variations resulting from extreme weather conditions.