Energy flow modeling, economic and sensitivity analysis of eggplantproduction in Guilan province of Iran

ABSTRACT:The aim of this research was to examine the energy consumption and economic analysis of eggplant production in Guilan province of Iran. Also, the marginal physical productivity (MPP) method was applied to sensitivity of energy and cost inputs using linear regression. For this purpose, data were collected from 60 farmers by a face to face questionnaire.Total input energy and yield was found to be about 13911 MJ ha-1 and 21290 kg ha-1 for eggplant productions, respectively.Also, the highest share of inputs for total energy consumption was belonged to diesel fuel and chemical fertilizers (mainly nitrogen), respectively. The results of energy indices analysisrevealed the energy use efficiency, energy productivity, net energy and energy intensiveness were found as 9.03, 1.53 kg MJ-1, 111701.33 MJ ha-1and 5.19 MJ $-1, respectively. The Cobb-Douglass production function was used to determine a relation between input energies and yield in eggplant productions. Results illustrated that by using Cobb-Douglass production function to determine mathematical relationship between energy input and yield,seed energy had the highest impact on eggplant yield. Also, the impact of human labor, diesel fuel, biocides and seed were significant at 1% and machinery was significant at 5% probability level. Also, direct and non-renewable energies were found to be rather high. Sensitivity analysis indicated that among the inputs,seed the highest MPP value of energy inputs, followed by diesel fuel energy inputs. Economic analysis of eggplant production was carried out and total cost of eggplant production wasobtained as 2682.56 $ ha-1. Also the benefit to cost ratio was calculated as 1.67.