Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) In Order to Reduction of Consumption Inputs in Silage Corn production in the Shahrekord County

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering of Biosystems, Faculty of Agriculture, Shahrekord University, PO Box 115, Shahrekord, 88186-34141, Iran.

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering of Biosystems, Faculty of Agriculture, Shahrekord University, PO Box 115, Shahrekord, 88186-34141, Iran

3 Department of agricultural machinery and mechanization- Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University of Khuzestan-Mollasani

Abstract

Analysis of energy consumption provides useful information for planners and policymakers to improve the efficiency of energy consumption. This study was conducted to evaluate and investigating the the energy flow and greenhouse emissions in silage corn production by data envelopment analysis method. The primary data was collected from 50 farms of silage corn production in the Shahrekord County by simple random sampling. The total amount of inputs energy and output energy was 77693 MJ.ha-1 and 502669 MJ.ha-1, respectively, which after improving in inputs consumption was resulted a reduction of 12080 MJ /ha in total inputs energy. Energy ratio (ER) and energy productivity (EP) were determined as 3.1, 2.57 MJ.kg-1 in actual conditions and 3.67 and 2.17 MJ.kg-1 in optimization conditions, respectively. Electricity was identified as major contributor to total energy consumption as 41205 MJ.ha-1 (53.3%) and also after improving in inputs consumption, the summation of water and electricity had the most contribution on the total energy saving with the share of 22%. Also, the total GHG emission in actual and optimum conditions were calculated as 2885.5 and 2554.5 kgCO2eq. per ha, respectively.

Keywords


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