ABSTRACT

China has developed into the world’s largest producer of peanuts; however, it remains unable to achieve self-sufficiency. We assessed China’s peanut production performance and determined the crucial influential factors to improve the efficiency and productivity of peanut production. In this article, the performance of ten main peanut producing areas was evaluated from 2009 to 2018 through the adoption of a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach and the Malmquist index. The results revealed inefficient peanut production in China. First and foremost, the overall efficiency was not located at the production frontier due to the decreasing scale efficiency. In addition, insufficient technological progress led to the relatively low total factor productivity. Last but not least, the managerial inefficiency was the main external environmental factor influencing the peanut production performance in China. Accordingly, we put forward corresponding suggestions, such as enhancing the environmental factors, realising the technological process, and achieving the optimal scale.