Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Technological adoption does not automatically improve farm performance; farmers must also use available technologies efficiently. This study assessed technological mastery among rice farmers in Indragiri Hilir Regency, where the cultivated rice area has declined substantially, and productivity improvement is increasingly important. A balanced panel of 59 rice-farming decision-making units was observed in 2023 and 2024, respectively. An output-oriented data envelopment analysis and Malmquist productivity index were estimated using land, labor, seed, fertilizers, pesticides, and farm equipment as inputs and rice production as the output variable. Productivity change was decomposed into technical efficiency, pure efficiency, scale efficiency, and technical changes. Technological mastery was operationally defined as a condition in which both technical efficiency change and technical change exceeded one, and technical efficiency change exceeded technical change. The average total factor productivity increased by 33.30% (TFPCH = 1.3330). This growth was driven mainly by technical change (TC = 1.3153), whereas the technical efficiency change (TEC = 1.0294) was modest with small contributions from pure efficiency change (PEC = 1.0206) and scale efficiency change (SEC = 1.0084). The sample-level technological mastery score, calculated as TEC minus TC, was − 0.2710 and was classified as not mastered. Only one farmer (1.69%) met the mastery criterion with a positive score of 0.1180. The production frontier improved faster than farmers’ capacity to catch up with and effectively use the available technology. Policies should therefore move beyond technology distribution and combine practical extension, machinery service access, affordable finance, peer learning, and locally adapted input and water-management packages.</p>