Research on Technical Efficiency of Feed Use for Sustainable Beef Cattle Breeding in China: Evidence from 169 Beef Cattle Farmers

Sustainable green development, cost saving, and efficiency improvement have become the main theme of the high-quality development of China’s animal husbandry and the problem of overuse of feed should be paid more attention. Based on the 3-year input–output data of 169 beef cattle farmers, a trans-logarithmic stochastic frontier function was used to study the relationship between feed utilization efficiency and beef cattle breeding scale. The results showed that the average technical efficiency of feed utilization was 0.56, and the technical efficiency of feed utilization increased year by year. Simultaneously, it showed that Chinese beef cattle farmers pay more attention to feed utilization efficiency at this stage; the feed utilization efficiency of retail and medium-sized beef cattle farmers was in the best state in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, the feed utilization efficiency of small-scale beef cattle farmers was the best; the technical efficiency of beef cattle breeding will increase with the expansion of scale. The technical efficiency of beef cattle breeding will increase with the expansion of the scale, and the feed utilization efficiency of large-scale farmers is also better than that of retail farmers, and the scale of beef cattle breeding can bring better benefits. However, from the perspective of feed utilization efficiency, it is not the largest scale that represents the best efficiency, and from the perspective of breeding technology efficiency, the gap between various scales is gradually narrowing. This should also prove that under the condition of hard resource constraints, the large-scale development of beef cattle breeding is in line with the basic national conditions of China at this stage.