The study of farm production efficiency has been not only a popular field of research in the field of agricultural economics, but also an important part of the development policy due to the strategic position of agriculture in many developing countries. Most of the studies of production efficiency have been in price or allocative efficiency, mostly by using production function approach, recently by using profit function approach, and some by using household utility function approach, inspired by Schultz’s efficient farmers. Others dealt with technical efficiency or the management component of the factors of production by including such dummies or indeces as proxies. In this study the production function approach is used with the inclusion of technical efficiency measurement from the linear programming frontier production function which is expected to give unbiased input-output coefficients and greater statistical power in hypothesis testing, and can ' be related to various factors contributing to the differences in technical efficiency.

The result of this study of efficiency can be related to the dynamic element of farmers’ behaviOur in the adjusment to the transition process of most farmer in developing countries of Asia. This process includes technological, and more importance and significance institutional; from the traditional-input exchange and sharing character toward more commercial and productivity oriented on the use of non-traditional input. There have, been several, studies on this character in Java, such as Geertz’s agricultural involution, Suwardi’s more rational larger farmers, Collier’s ani-ani-bawon system, and Hayami-Kikuchi's nonrelationship of sickle-wage system. This study can be said‘ to identify this further process with the more general one of using the non-traditional input of tractor in comparison to the use of labor and drought animal.