Paper
Identifying sustainable and efficient poultry farms in the light of energy use efficiency: a Data Envelopment Analysis approach
- Authors:
- Asadollah Akram; Shahin Rafiee; Paria Sefeedpari
- Abstract
- Increasing population level and food demand around the world has made producers and policy makers to utilize scientific models and techniques for taking sustainability into consideration. Energy as an important ingredient in all production systems has been focused in this study for the production process of egg in some selected poultry farms in Alburz province, Iran. The following research tries to assess an optimal input use for egg producers and determine the efficient and inefficient farmers. The study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. DEA is used to determine the efficient decision-making units. Data were collected from 40 currently active and industrial poultry for egg production farms and we found that 6 and 9 units are efficient in CCR and BCC models, respectively. Mean value of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency scores were 0.85, 0.93 and 0.91, respectively. Based on the findings, fossil fuel and electricity were determined as the most inefficient inputs. The results also revealed that about 22% of the total input resources could be saved if the farmers follow the input package recommended by the DEA. Based on the results, we finally drew to some conclusions including promoting the inefficient farmers’ level of knowledge, applying more high-tech equipment and taking advantage of renewable energy sources.
- Keywords
- Energy use; Data envelopment analysis; Egg production; Technical efficiency; Sustainability.
- StartPage
- 1
- EndPage
- 8
- Doi
- 10.18005/JAEB0101001