Determinants of Rice Seed Production. When we look at production (see Table 3.41), we will focus our attention only on those variables that are statistically significant at a level of 90 percent or higher. There are only three such variables and all have a positive effect on production of rice seeds: age of the household head, access to credit, and area of rain-fed land. Age is a proxy for experience and reputation of the household level. We know that there are a number of farmers with more than 20 years experience in seed production. Access to credit might be important to obtain needed inputs, particularly labor, the main input to production cost as seen in section 7. Finally, land assets influence total production for obvious reasons. Interestingly, we observe that land under poor irrigation is the most important determinant of rice seed production. It is conceivable that the larger the share of land with poor irrigation, the greater is the incentive for the farmer to engage in rice seed production, a highly profitable activity for this type of land. With well irrigated land, the farmer will choose to plant ordinary rice, with the expectation that the lower cost of production might still give an adequate profit. Table 3.41–Determinants of rice seed production Beta Coefficient Standard Error t-Statistic Significance (Constant) -3481.40 5889.18 -0.59 0.56 Rice Price -1.21 1.25 -0.97 0.34 Fertilizer Price 0.88 1.13 0.78 0.44 Purchase Price 0.52 1.94 0.26 0.79 Age of Farmer 56.26 30.64 1.84 0.07 Number of Dependents -78.89 177.76 -0.44 0.66 Number of Adults -144.56 178.40 -0.81 0.42 Education Level 182.96 180.49 1.01 0.32 Gender of Farmer -1542.46 1047.53 -1.47 0.15 Year of Farm Creation 32.40 27.31 1.19 0.24 Member of GPS 695.95 565.43 1.23 0.23 Number of Extension Visits -16.68 77.85 -0.21 0.83 Access to Credit 1660.68 727.11 2.28 0.03 Irrigation Expenditure 0.00 0.00 1.19 0.24 Area of Irrigated Rice 222.39 156.11 1.42 0.16 Area of Rain-Fed Rice 364.97 208.41 1.75 0.09 Number of Livestock -10.01 7.83 -1.28 0.21 Dist. to Input Market 23.93 38.00 0.63 0.53 Dist. to Output Market -42.07 44.00 -0.96 0.35 R1 -2326.22 1160.48 -2.00 0.05 R3 -1619.55 2069.93 -0.78 0.44 R4 -945.55 1656.46 -0.57 0.57 R5 6993.59 1843.26 3.79 0.00 Source: Computed by the authors on the base of IFPRI-FOFIFA data.
