Study On Sustainable Corn Mechanized Production System Based On Energy Evaluation In Pakistan

Sustainable grain production is a key concern for South Asian region,where population growth is almost tripled during last 50 years.Irrespective of the scenario of population growth rate,food production has decreased in many parts of South Asia,while per capita food consumption has remained stagnant.Furthermore,per capita agricultural land has been declining sharply,for instance per capita arable land decreased from 0.11 to 0.05 ha in Bangladesh,0.23 to 0.13 ha in India,0.15 to 0.08 ha in Nepal,and 0.24 to 0.12 ha in Pakistan from 1980 to 2010.Increasing the effectiveness of agriculture mechanization along with proper utilization of agronomic iputs could be helpful to increase crop productivity and sustainability of the system.As crop production is vulnerable to climate change,therefore agriculture practices affecting the environment should also be carefully considered.Food and environmental security requires intensive farming with increased productivity and effective use of resources.Most of the research in this region focused on the availability and affordability of agricultural inputs,however no study was found in literature accounting performance evaluation of agriculture production process based on mechanization,energy performance and environmental impact assessment.This study assessed the mechanization index,energy utilization in corn production Pakistan and analyzed its environmental impact.Mechanization index(MI),its influence on corn productivity in correspondence with socioeconomic factors of Pakistani farmers were further analyzed through inter correlation and linear regression analysis.An overall MI ensued 0.60 per hectare,results further,revealed that large farmers had higher MI and corn yield as compared to the small and medium ones and it varied from 0.85 to 0.34 with negative fluctuation in farm size.Moreover,farmer’s specific and socioeconomic variables(such as farmer’s education,farming experience,dependency burden,ownership status of machines and external support towards agriculture machinery)were used to observe their influence on MI.Education level,owned and subsidized agriculture machinery have a significant effect while farming experience and dependency burden found a negative effect on MI.So,improving the farmers educational level through literacy campaign and long-term investment for creating support services infrastructure is require to increase the MI at corn farms of Pakistan.Further,energy utilization in corn production was valued.An efficient assessment of energy consumption,energy flow,and energy use efficiency in crop production,is inevitable to accomplish the intensive demand for energy.Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA)models based on energy input-output analysis are commonly used for assessment of energy.However standard implication of traditional(CCR)and extended(SBM)DEA models have shortcomings in reporting efficiency score,CCR neglect slacks while SBM caused problems when reporting efficiency over time.To overcome this problem,an ensemble approach compromised the characteristics of two models(CCR-SBM)is proposed in the current study.Based on the weighted average of the relative efficiencies of two contending models an ensemble efficiency(EE)score was reported for energy efficiency evaluation of considered DMUs.Preliminary analysis ensued average corn yield of 6874 kg ha-1 with an overall energy input of 41624.40 MJ ha-1,and net energy gain,energy use efficiency(average),specific energy and energy productivity,was 59423.50 MJ ha-1,2.43,6.06 MJ Kg-1,and 0.17 Kg MJ-1,respectively.Using four major shareholders of input energy(i.e.,fertilizer,diesel fuel,irrigation water and chemicals)and,corn yield as output,the projected ensemble approach resulted in an unproductive trend of energy use efficiency in Pakistan with an average ensemble efficiency score of 76.31%,and plausible potential of energy saving from 4924.10 to 17155.97 MJ ha-1.Furthermore,ensemble approach shows that EE score could help to significantly reduce the shortcomings of slacks and time fluctuation when reporting efficiency score,compared with using individual models.The proposed approach scrutinized and provided a comprehensive state of the actual situation of energy efficiency in corn production of Pakistan that is important in the context of decision makings.This study further applied LCA to investigate the environmental impacts assessment of crop production system in a developing country case study.Three functional units of land-based,mass-based,and energy-based were investigated.IMPACT 2002+ methodology-a combination of IMPACT 2002,Eco-Indicator 99,CML and IPCC,was applied to be the impact assessment methodology for the LCA.The results emphasized that the global warming potential of tonne production of corn,one hectare corn farm and production of 1000 MJ energy were 354.18,34569.90,and 1275.13 kg CO2 eq,respectively.The off-farm and on-farm emissions of nitrogen-based chemical fertilizers were the hotspot in most impact categories.Regarding to the highest impact of N-based fertilize,different scenarios of reduction of this input consumption were investigated.The results highlighted that there is a high potential to mitigation of environmental impacts of the production system through reduction of N-based chemical fertilizer.Normalization results indicated that the damage category of human health had the highest negative impacts of corn production followed by global warming.Therefore we further assed the optimum energy reqiurnments,to identify,the possible energy loss,we applied the energy balance at corn farms and data was analyzed by EDEA that provided us optimum requirement and energy saving target.Findings of the study discovered that a total of 33330.45 MJ ha-1 energy is required to produce 6874.01 kg of corn yield per hectare,against an actual amount of 41624.40 MJ ha-1.It is therfore recommended that with optimum values farmers of the study area can not only saved energy by could also participate in mitigation solutions of the GHGs emissions.Further analysis also unveiled that farming experience,and education increase the energy efficiency while dependency burden and subsidies on inputs decreases the efficiency drastically.Findings of the study suggest resource conservation measures through better agricultural management practices,and production methods and extension activities are required to improve the efficiency of energy consumption in corn production of Pakistan.