IMPROVING ENERGY USE EFFICIENCY OF CORN PRODUCTION BY USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS (A NON-PARAMETRIC APPROACH)

Modern farming technologies and researches are used to enhance the crop productivity in the developed countries that are too specific to be implemented directly in developing countries due to variations in soil properties, farmers knowledge, available farm powers and local plant nutrients. Therefore, this study was performed in the agriculture rich country Pakistan that have similar land properties with most of the top agriculture dependent countries (India, Sri Lanka). Energy use pattern of corn production was studied and the degrees of technical efficiency of farmers were analyzed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique (non-parametric). Based on the outcomes of the DEA analysis, the inefficient energy inputs were identified and further explored with core objective of significant reduction of excess valuable resources. Randomly, 200 corn growers were interviewed to collect information on profound questionnaire (utilized labor, seed, fertilizers, farmyard manure (FYM), chemicals, agricultural machinery, diesel fuel and water for irrigation and corn yield) with major attention to include all possible energy inputs-outputs. Our results suggested that the total energy of 37361.62 MJ/ha was consumed for corn production, with an average technical efficiency of 83% under constant returns to scale assumptions. The major energy input belongs to fertilizer that if applied and managed according to our optimized value (30969.47 MJ/ha) could save 17.11% resources that will ultimately add equal amount in corn-yield. The findings of the study suggest a vibrant utilization and outreach of extension services to disseminate the knowledge about optimum utilization of inputs to save the extra utilization of energy at farm level which we believe can rapidly increase the economy of all developing countries.