Investigating the Pattern of Energy Consumption, Sensitivity Analysis and Economic Performance of Plum Production in Khansar Township, Isfahan, Iran

The purposes of this study were to determine energy use pattern and study the relationships between energy inputs and yield, costs and revenue for plum production in Khansar Township. In this research, the required information was collected by questionnaire and face-to-face interview with gardeners. The inputs included labor, machinery, diesel fuel, chemical and organic fertilizers, irrigation water and electricity. The Cobb-Douglas model and sensitivity analysis were used to investigate the effect of input energy on performance. In this study the total energy used to produce plum was 56721.19 MJ/ha, and the electricity input with 66.25% was as the most common source of energy in plum production. The share of renewable energy for this product was 3.36%. The results of the Cobb Douglas function showed that the energy inputs of human labor, electricity, chemical fertilizer had a significant effect on performance. The results of sensitivity analysis showed that among the energy inputs, human labor energy had the highest marginal physical productivity (MPP) and the energy of human labor had the highest effect (0.87) compared with other sources in the production of plums. Energy efficiency for plum production was 0.46 and the human labor accounted for the highest production cost with 70.75%. Also, the benefit to cost ratio in the production of plum was calculated as 1.9.