Abstract

SANTIAGO ZARATE, Ilich Miguel et al. Productivity and technological change in the sugarcane agroindustry in Mexico. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2021, vol.12, n.6, pp.1005-1017.  Epub Mar 21, 2022. ISSN 2007-0934.  https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v12i6.2692.

The sugarcane agroindustry in Mexico has an important share in employment and linkages in the economies of 267 municipalities in 15 states. The objective of this research was to analyze the total productivity of the factors, the technical efficiency and the technological change of the sugarcane mills of Mexico. The method used was the Malmquist index that measures changes in productivity over time and decomposes it into changes in efficiency and changes in technology under the assumptions of input orientation and constant returns to scale. The analysis used balanced panel data for the harvest period 2006/2007-2015/2016. The results show that at the level of decision-making units, the case of the El Dorado sugarcane mill in Sinaloa stands out, with an accumulative percentage change in its technical efficiency of 4.4%, in technical progress and innovation of 21.7% and a total factor productivity of 27%. The inverse situation occurs with the San Miguel del Naranjo sugarcane mill, whose accumulative percentage change in technical efficiency grew by -10.2%, technological progress and innovation by -0.3%, while total factor productivity was -10.4%. The general conclusion is that for 20 sugarcane mills that operated in the study period, productivity grew at negative rates, and for 30 it grew at positive rates.

Keywords : efficient frontier; Malmquist’s index; technical efficiency; total factor productivity.