An Analysis and Optimization of Energy Consumption for Irrigated Wheat Production Using Data Envelopment Approach (Case Study in Alborz Province)

Wheat as strategic product, has the highest area of cultivation and crop production in Iran. In this study energy use pattern for irrigated wheat production in Alborz province of Iran was studied and the score of technical and scale efficiency of producers were analyzed using a non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique for discriminate efficient farmers from inefficient ones. The study also helped to identify the wasteful uses of energy by inefficient farmers and to suggest reasonable savings in energy uses from different inputs. Further, the effect of optimization of energy on energy ratio and energy productivity was investigated. Primary data were obtained through field survey and personal interviews using questionnaires from 20 randomly selected irrigated wheat farms from Alborz province, the one of important center of wheat production in Iran. Secondary data and energy equivalents were obtained from available literature using collected data of the production period of 2017–2018. The inputs were human labor, diesel, machinery, fertilizers and chemicals, water for irrigation, seeds and electrical energies; while the yield value of wheat was considered as output. The results revealed that, the total input energy, output energy, energy use efficiency, energy productivity, net energy were 45458.84 MJ.ha-1, 162169.28 MJ.ha-1, 3.57, 0.27 kg.MJ -1 and 116710.44 MJ.ha-1, respectively. It was disclosed that the greatest shares of input energy with 43.06% (19576.2 MJ.ha-1) corresponded to the fertilizers. The production of wheat in the province of Alborz is reasonable because of the positive amount of net energy index. About 20% of farmers were found to be technically efficient. Based on input-oriented CRS and VRS models of DEA, the average values of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency were found to be 0.893, 0.990 and 0.901, respectively. The results also suggested that, on average, about 3.51% (1610.62 MJ.ha-1) of the total input energy could be saved without reducing the wheat yield from its present level provided that all farmers operated efficiently by adopting the recommendations based on the present study.