Analysis on the green total factor productivity of pig breeding in China: Evidence from a meta-frontier approach

The pig industry occupies an extremely significant position in agriculture. The input cost, output income and the amount of pollution emitted by pig farming of different scales are unequal. It is of great practical importance to reduce pollutant emission by improving efficiency for the development of hog breeding industry in China. With the addition of undesirable output, this paper uses the Slack Based Measure- Metafrontier Malmquist Luenberger index model considering scale heterogeneity to explore the evolution characteristics of China’s green total factor productivity of pig breeding (GTPB) based on the data of China’s 17 major pig producing provinces from 2004 to 2018. The results indicate that: (1) From 2004 to 2018, China’s large-scale GTPB is the highest, the medium-sized is the second, and the small-scale is the lowest. (2) In terms of regional distribution, China’s GTPB in western region is the highest, in eastern region is the second, and in central region is the lowest. (3) China’s GTPB shows efficiency growth and technological decline from 2004 to 2018. The pig breeding industry is generally fragile, which is greatly affected by emergencies. (4)The TGR of large-scale pig breeding is closest to 1, followed by middle-scale, and finally small-scale. According to the above empirical results, this text puts forward some policy suggestions to improve GTPB and environmental protection recommendations of hog breeding.