Cost-benefit analysis of vegetable production in Thai-Vietnamese homegardens in northeast Thailand

บทคัดย่อ

Homegardens have been widely promoted as highly sustainable low input agroecosystems that provide food, materials, cash income, and ecological services to poor rural households. However, there have been only a few attempts to assess their productive efficiency by measuring inputs of labor, cash and materials and outputs of food and other products. This study was designed to record all inputs and outputs for a period of 10 days of a sample of 9 homegardens of Thai-Vietnamese farmers in a village in Northeast Thailand. Short production cycle crops, e.g., lettuce, edible morning glory, and sweet corn, were the most commonly grown crops. Most garden produce is sold in the market but some is consumed by the farm households. The imputed cost of family labor accounted for 85% of total input costs while electricity used to power the pumps for irrigating the homegardens and manure each accounted for 6.8% of total input costs. Expenditures on fuel for hand tillers, chemical insecticides, and seed were small. The output values of the homegardens depended on the kinds of vegetables grown and their yields. On average, each household obtained gross income of 852 Baht (USD 26.4) and net return of 619 Baht/day. Productive efficiency was high with an average net return on input cost (net benefit - cost ratio) of 2.7:1, which is much higher than for rainfed rice, which is the main alternative agricultural system in the area. Productivity per labor hour was high with an average net return per labor hour of 117 Baht. Net benefits per unit area were also quite high with an average net return of 1.3 Baht/m2 of planted area per day. Not surprisingly, the Thai-Vietnamese farmers have largely abandoned cultivating rainfed rice in order to concentrate on their much more productive homegardens.