by Mohamed Tawfik Al-Mansouri

Created on: August 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 16, 2011

How Scientists Evaluate Energy in Agricultural Production:

In energy calculation, the two following indicators are used: energy efficiency (E) and production energy requirements (e). Both of the above indicators have limited implementation for evaluating food products because they disregard nutrients and sensoric features. For this reason indicators in scientific papers representing energy input for cereal unit production, digestive protein, plant oils, sugar and other reserve materials are calculated [ LEWIS 1982, NOWACKI 1988]. According to many authors, energy indicator is a very good criterion for evaluating fodder crop rotation [SZWEJKOWSKI 1999, STUPNICKA-RODZYNKIEWICZ and LEPIARCZYK 1991].

Economists, aware of these difficulties, paid a lot of attention to methodological research into setting proper equivalents for material and agro-technological input evaluation [KIJOWSKA 1986, ANUSZEWSKI 1987, PAWLAK 1988, WIELICKI 1990a, MICHALASKI 1991, SOBCZAK 1982, SOBCZAK et al. 1990].

In the majority of Polish scientific works the evaluation energy input for agro- technology is given along with fuel, human and animal labour , tractors and agriculture transportation inputs. This method enables the simplification of analysis, input balancing, and the calculation of production effectiveness, represented by various indicators [WJCICKI 1981, ANUSZEWSKI 1997, SOBCZAK 1982].

In Czech scientific works, KREJ (1986), STRAIL and IMON (1991) and others evaluated plant production energy. Additionally, fuel, with after harvest left-overs and light energy used by plants during vegetation periods, is included. The rest of the "added" energy is composed of materials, human and mechanical labour. In Polish and foreign scientific works, a lot of attention was devoted to studies on the possibilities of the reducing energy input for soil cultivation and plant protection.

MATTHEUS (1982) compared simplified systems in soil cultivation beginning from traditional plough calculation to plough-less calculation and direct sowing. He proved that the direct sowing of winter wheat decreased the energy input by five times. Less energy is used while using equipment such as harrows and listers than when using ploughs [DZIENIA and SOSNOWSKI 1990]. It was also shown that the abandoning of plant cultivation after harvest in the plough system for winter cereals about 14 to 40%, the usage of a soil miller and flat ploughing by about 20 to 47%, and direct sowing by about 49 to 77%.

In the cultivation

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>