JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL BIOLOGY, cilt.41, sa.2, ss.505-513, 2020 (SCI-Expanded)
Aim: this study carried out to determine the
energy efficiency of farmers, to find efficient and inefficient ones and to
identify the wasteful uses of energy in sunflower production. Moreover, the
degrees of technical and scale efficiency of producers were investigated.
Methodology:
Data used in
this study were collected using face-to-face surveys from 113 sunflower farms
in Aksaray in Central Anatolian Region, one of the most important center of
sunflower production in Turkey. Data Envelopment Analysis approach was used to
analyze the energy efficiency of farmers
Results: Average yield and energy consumption for
sunflower production were 2124.4 kg ha-1and13517.45 MJ ha-1,
respectively. In addition, the results
of DEA application showed that, the technical, pure technical and scale
efficiencies of farmers were 0.82, 0.97 and 0.84, respectively.
Interpretation:
energy
saving target ratio for sunflower production was calculated as 4.18%,
indicating that by following the recommendations resulted from this study,
about 564.54 MJ ha-1 of total input energy could be saved while
holding the constant level of sunflower yield. Also, the highest contribution
to total energy saving was made by chemical fertilizers with 42.58% of total
saving, followed by diesel fuel (20.13%), machinery (19.33%) and chemicals
(13.74%).