Energy use and economical analysis of potato production in Iran a case study:
Ardabil province
Ali Mohammadi *, Ahmad Tabatabaeefar, Shahan Shahin, Shahin Rafiee, Alireza Keyhani
Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Faculty of Biosystems Engineering, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The purpose of this study is to determine energy consumption of input and output used in potato produc-
Received 12 December 2007 tion, and making an economical analysis in Ardabil, Iran. For this purpose, the data were collected from
Accepted 21 July 2008 100 potato farms in Ardabil, Iran. Inquiries were conducted in a face-to-face interviewing November–
Available online 2 September 2008
December 2006 period. Farms were selected based on random sampling method. The results indicated
that total energy inputs were 81624.96 MJ ha1. About 40% of this was generated by chemical fertilizers,
Keywords: 20% from diesel oil and machinery. About 82% of the total energy inputs used in potato production was
Energy ratio
indirect (seeds, fertilizers, manure, chemicals, machinery) and 18% was direct (human labor, diesel).
Economical analysis
Potato
Mean potato yield was about 28453.61 kg ha1, it obtained under normal conditions on irrigated farming,
Iran and taking into account the energy value of the seed, the net energy and energy productivity value was
estimated to be 20808.03 MJ ha1 and 0.35, respectively, and the ratio of energy outputs to energy inputs
was found to be 1.25. This indicated an intensive use of inputs in potato production not accompanied by
increase in the final product. Cost analysis revealed that total cost of production for one hectare of potato
production was 3267.17 $. Benefit–cost ratio was calculated as 1.88.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction the main potato producer countries. The potato is also cultivated in
Poland, Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, Iran, and Canada [9].
Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) are grown worldwide under a Based on FAO statistics [9], Iran, produced about 4,830,120 tonnes
wider range of altitude, latitude, and climatic conditions than of potato in 2005, more than 15% of which is produced in Ardabil
any other major food crop—from sea level to over 4000 m eleva- province [10]. Potatoes are the single most important agricultural
tion. No other crop can match the potato in its production of food commodity in Ardabil province. In 2005, for example, the crop
energy and food value per unit area [1]. It is also high in Vitamin C, was planted in 25,503 ha. Potatoes are grown throughout Ardabil,
niacin and Vitamin B6. Yet, the potato plant has one of the heaviest Iran under irrigated conditions [10].
production demands for fertilizer inputs of all vegetable crops, i.e., The relation between agriculture and energy is very close. Agri-
its nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) requirements culture itself is an energy user and energy supplier in the form of
are, respectively, 100, 100 and 33% greater than that required for bio-energy [11]. Energy use in agriculture has developed in re-
tomato or pepper plant production [2]. Being a temperate crop, po- sponse to increasing populations, limited supply of arable land
tato growth and yield are highly affected by higher temperature, and desire for an increasing standard of living. In all societies, these
especially a mean temperature above 17 °C [3]. Tuberization oc- factors have encouraged an increase in energy inputs to maximize
curs at low temperatures and is delayed or even inhibited at higher yields, minimize labor-intensive practices, or both [12]. Effective
temperatures, tubers rarely being formed above 30 °C. As a result, energy use in agriculture is one of the conditions for sustainable
potato is grown in countries where the prevailing mean air tem- agricultural production, since it provides financial savings, fossil
perature is around 15–18 °C during the growing season and rainfall resources preservation and air pollution reduction [13]. Applica-
or irrigation provides ample water [4–8]. Recent publications have tion of integrated production methods are recently considered as
shown the importance of the potato as a global food crop, ranking a means to reduce production costs, to efficiently use human labor
fourth among other crops with an overall annual production of and other inputs and to protect the environment (often in conjunc-
nearly 327 million tonnes and about 19 million ha planted. China, tion with high numbers of tourists present in the area). Energy
Russian Federation, India, United States, Ukraine and Germany are budgets for agricultural production can be used as building blocks
for life-cycle assessments that include agricultural products, and
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 261 2801011; fax: +98 261 2808138. can also serve as a first step towards identifying crop production
E-mail address: mohammadi_017@yahoo.com (A. Mohammadi). processes that benefit most from increased efficiency [14]. Many
0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2008.07.003
A. Mohammadi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 49 (2008) 3566–3570 3567
Nomenclature
P
researchers have studied energy and economic analysis to deter- ð N h Sh Þ
n¼ P ð1Þ
mine the energy efficiency of plant production, such as sugarcane N 2 D2 þ N h Sh2
in Morocco [15], wheat, maize, sugar beet, sunflower, grape, olive,
almond, barley, oat, rye, orange, lemon, apple, pear, peach, apricot where n is the required sample size; N is the number of holdings in
and plum in Italy [16], rice in Malaysia [17], sweet cherry, citrus, target population; Nh is the number of the population in the h strat-
apricot, stake-tomato, cotton, sugar beet, greenhouse vegetable ification; Sh is the standard deviation in the h stratification, S2h is the
and some field crops and vegetable in turkey [18–24], wheat in variance of h stratification; d is the precision (x X); z is the reli-
Iran [25], soybean, maize and wheat in Italy [26], soybean based ability coefficient (1.96 which represents the 95% reliability);
production system, potato in India [27,28], maize and sorghum D2 = d2/z2.
in United States [29], cotton and sunflower in Greece [30,31], win- The permissible error in the sample size was defined to be 5%
ter oilseed rape in Germany [32]. However, no studies have been for 95% confidence, and sample size was calculated as 100 farms.
published on the energy and economical analysis of potato produc- For the growth and development, energy demand in agriculture
tion in Iran. can be divided into direct and indirect, renewable, and non-renew-
The aim of the present paper is to study the energy input and able energies [11]. The energetic efficiency of the agricultural sys-
output per hectare for the production of potato, and to make a cost tem has been evaluated by the energy ratio between output and
analysis in Ardabil, Iran. It also identifies operations where energy input. Human labor, machinery, diesel oil, fertilizer, pesticides
savings could be realized by changing applied practices in order to and seed amounts and output yield values of potato crops have
increase the energy ratio, and propose improvements to reduce en- been used to estimate the energy ratio. Energy equivalents shown
ergy consumption for potato production. in Table 1 were used for estimation. The sources of mechanical en-
ergy used on the selected farms included tractors and diesel oil.
The mechanical energy was computed on the basis of total fuel
2. Material and methods
consumption (L ha1) in different operations. Therefore, the energy
consumed was calculated using conversion factors (1 L die-
The study was carried out in 100 potato producer in Ardabil,
sel = 56.31 MJ) and expressed in MJ ha1 [30].
Iran. Twelve villages were chosen to represent the whole study
Basic information on energy inputs and potato yields were en-
area. The province is located in the northwest of Iran, within 34°
tered into Excel spreadsheets, SPSS 15 spreadsheets. Based on the
040 and 39° 420 north latitude and 47° 020 and 48° 550 east longi-
energy equivalents of the inputs and output (Table 1), the energy
tude. The total area of the Ardabil province is 1,795,200 ha, and
ratio (energy use efficiency), energy productivity and the specific
the farming area is 718,614 ha, with a share of 40.03%. Data were
energy were calculated [18,26].
collected from the growers by using a face-to-face questionnaire 1
performed in November–December 2006. The data collected be- Energy output ðMJ ha Þ
Energy use efficiency ¼ 1
ð2Þ
longed to the production period of 2005–2006. The secondary Energy input ðMJ ha Þ
material used in this study was collected from the previous studies Potato output ðkg ha Þ
1
Table 2 Table 3
Management practices for potato Amounts of inputs and output in potato production
Table 4 Table 7
Amounts of inputs and output in potato production Economic analysis of potato
Quantity (inputs Quantity per Total energy Percentage of the total Cost and return components Value
and outputs) unit area (ha) equivalent energy input (%) 1
Yield (kg ha ) 28453.61
(MJ ha1)
Sale price ($ ha1) 0.22
A. Inputs Gross value of production ($ ha1) 6130.64
1. Human labor 770.64 1510.45 1.85 Variable cost of production ($ ha1) 2219.56
(h) Fixed cost of production ($ ha1) 1047.62
2. Machinery (h) 51.14 3206.48 3.93 Total cost of production ($ ha1) 3267.17
3. Diesel fuel (L) 290.04 12897.24 15.80 Total cost of production ($ kg1) 0.11
4. Chemical 1191.59 40.17 Gross return ($ ha1) 3911.08
fertilizers (kg) Net return ($ ha1) 2863.47
(a) Nitrogen (N) 402.58 26626.64 32.62 Benefit to cost ratio 1.88
(b) Phosphate 284.23 3535.82 4.33
(P2O5)
(c) Potassium 204.53 2280.51 2.79
(K2O)
for lemon and 1.88 for mandarin [19], 1.03 for stake-tomato [20],
(e) Sulphur (S) 297.94 333.69 0.41
(d) Zinc (Zn) 2.31 19.40 0.02 0.86 for cotton [21], 1.17 for sugar beet [22].
5. Farmyard 27845.36 8353.61 10.24
manure (kg) 4. Conclusions
6. Chemicals (kg) 3.02 362.40 0.44
7. Water for 11145.50 11368.41 13.93
irrigation In this study, energy use of inputs and output in potato produc-
(m3) tion in Ardabil province of Iran were determined. Data were col-
8. Seeds (potato) 3091.75 11130.30 13.64 lected from 100 farms which were selected based on random
(kg)
sampling method. Face-to-face questionnaire method was used in
Total energy 81624.96 100
input (MJ) data collecting. Total energy consumption in potato production
was 115.9 GJ ha1. The energy input of chemical fertilizer (40.17%),
B. Outputs
1. Potato (kg) 28453.61 102432.99 mainly nitrogen, has the biggest share within the total energy inputs
Total energy 102432.99 followed by diesel fuel (15.80%). Energy use efficiency, specific en-
output (MJ) ergy, energy productivity and net energy were 1.25, 2868.70 MJ ton-
nes1, 0.35 kg MJ1, 208080.03 MJ ha1, respectively. About 82.35%
of the total energy inputs used in potato production was indirect,
Table 5
while only about 17.65% was direct. Approximately 74.27% of total
Energy input–output ratio in potato production
energy input from non-renewable and only 25.73% from renewable
Items Unit Potato energy forms. The benefit–cost ratio was found to be 1.88 in the re-
1
Energy input MJ ha 81624.96 sult of economical analysis of potato. The net return from potato pro-
Energy output MJ ha1 102432.99 duction was obtained 2863.47 $ ha1. Energy management is an
Yield kg ha1 28453.61
important issue in terms of efficient, sustainable and economic use
Energy use efficiency – 1.25
Specific energy MJ tonnes1 2868.70 of energy. Energy use in potato production is not efficient and detri-
Energy productivity kg MJ1 0.35 mental to the environment due to mainly excess input use. There-
Net energy MJ ha1 208080.03 fore, reducing these inputs would provide more efficient Fertilizer
application, and diesel. Furthermore, integrated pest control tech-
niques should be put in practice widely to improve pesticide use. It
Table 6 can be expected that all these measurements would be useful not
Total energy input in the form of direct, indirect, renewable and non-renewable for
only for reducing negative effects to environment, human health,
potato production (MJ ha1)
maintaining sustainability and decreasing production costs, but also
Form of energy (MJ ha1) Potato %a for providing higher energy use efficiency.
b
Direct energy 14407.69 17.65
Indirect energyc 67217.27 82.35 References
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