Modeling and analysis of energy efficiency in grape production of Iran.

This paper examines the energy use patterns and energy input-output analysis of grape productions in Iran. For this purposes, a face to face questionnaire with 48 grape growers from Hamadan province, Iran was conducted. The results indicated that total energy inputs were 33873.78 MJ ha -1 . The energy use efficiency, energy productivity and net energy of grape production were found to be 1.73, 0.15 kg MJ -1 and 24748.62 MJ ha -1 . Among input energy sources, chemical fertilizers and electricity contained highest energy with 51.64 and 23.95%, respectively. Econometric model evaluation showed that, the impact of human labor for grape was significant at 1% level. The results also showed that, direct, indirect and renewable and non-renewable, energy forms had a positive and statistically significant impact on output level. Also, the marginal physical productivity (MPP) technique was applied to analyze the sensitivity of energy inputs. It was found that, grape production had more sensitivity on chemicals, electricity and water for irrigation energies; so that an additional use of 1 MJ from each of the chemicals, electricity and water for irrigation would lead to an increase in production by 5.68, 2.42 and 1.81 kg, respectively.