Analysis of Energy Efficiency of Mechanized Cultivation in Potato Production Using a Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

In this study, a non-parametric method of data envelopment analysis (DEA) was applied to analyze the efficiency of farmers, distinguish between efficient and ineffi cient farmers and identify wasteful uses of energy in potato production in the province of Ardabil, Iran. For the purposes of this study, data were collected from 60 potato farms using a face-to-face questionnaire in May-June 2012 and farms were selected based on a random sampling method. The following results were obtained for this study: from a total of 60 farmers considered for the analysis, 28.33% and 40.00% were found to be technically and pure technically efficient, respectively. The average values of technical, pure technical and scale efficiency scores of farmers were 0.881, 0.923 and 0.954, respectively. The optimum energy requirement was found to be 89786.21 MJ ha -1 , indicating that 14.43% of the total energy input could be saved while maintaining a constant level of potato yield, if the present study’s recommendations are followed. Out of the total energy savings, the contribution of chemical fertilizer energy was the highest. Energy use efficiency was calculated at 1.08 and 1.26 in the present and target conditions respectively, indicating that the optimization of energy use improved energy use efficiency by 16.86%.

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