Abstract

Energy ratio and technical efficiency are the ways to explain the efficiency of farmers in crops production. The objective of this study was the application of non-parametric method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to analyze the efficiency of orchards, discriminate efficient farmers from inefficient ones and to identify wasteful uses of energy for grape production in Hamadan province, Iran. For this purpose, data were collected from 48 farmers by using a face to face questionnaire. The results revealed that the average value of technical, pure technical and scale efficiency scores of orchards were about 0.74, 0.86 and 0.84, respectively. The contribution of saving energy for chemical fertilizers was the highest and followed by diesel fuel & electricity with shares of 61.7 and 28.7 percent, respectively. The total energy savings calculated to be 14.3 percent of total input energy. Optimization of energy use improved the energy use efficiency, energy productivity and net energy by 16.8, 13.3 and 19.6 percent, respectively.