New Zealand farmers practice a form of ‗industrialised' agriculture that relies on relatively high inputs of fossil fuels, not only to power machinery directly but also for manufacturing artificial fertilizers and agrichemicals (Wells, 2001). Consequently, New Zealand is one of the countries with the highest energy input per unit weight (in agriculture) in the world (Conforti & Giampietro, 1997). Furthermore, in terms of shipping, the influence of increasing global fuel costs is greater on New Zealand farming than in other countries. The main aim of this study was to estimate energy consumption in wheat production. Energy determination can give a clear picture of farms in order to compare different farming systems and energy inputs. The second main target of this study was to develop a neural network model to simulate and predict energy use in wheat production under different conditions incorporating social, geographical, and technical factors. Additionally, the interaction effects between different factors were examined in this study.This study was conducted on irrigated and dryland wheat fields in Canterbury, New Zealand, in the 2007-2008 harvest year. Canterbury represents 87% of the wheat area and 66% of the arable area harvested in New Zealand.Energy consumption here is defined as the energy used for the production of wheat until it leaves the farm. The data were collected from three different sources:questionnaire, literature review, and field measurements. The energy inputs estimated in this study are those that go into on-farm production systems before the post-harvest processes. The study considered only the energy used in wheat production, without taking into account the natural sources of energy (radiation, wind, rain, etc). IVA survey was conducted to collect the most important data and to identify farmers' attitudes and opinions about energy consumption. In this study, 40 arable farms were selected randomly, as far as possible. From the initial analysis, it was found that 30 farms were irrigated and the rest were dryland farms. Irrigated farms were irrigated between one to ten times annually depending on the rainfall. Some irrigated farms have also been converted to dryland farms, or vice versa, in different years. The data for a large number of farming factors were gathered in the survey.Average energy consumption for wheat production was estimated at around 22,600 MJ/ha. On average, fertilizer and electricity (mostly for irrigation) were used more than other energy sources, at around 10,654 MJ/ha (47%) and 4,870 MJ/ha (22%), respectively. The average energy consumption for wheat production in irrigated farming systems and dryland farming systems was estimated at 25,600 and 17,458 MJ/ha, respectively. This study is the first to create an appropriate Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to predict energy consumption in wheat production with optimum variables. This study would be the first to investigate the factors related to the efficient use of energy in agricultural production. A careful study o...

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This study evaluates energy efficiency of pastoral (PDFs) and barn (BDFs) dairy farming systems in New Zealand through application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Two models constant return to scale (CCR) and variable return to scale (BCC) of DEA were employed for determining the technical (TE), pure technical (PTE) and scale (SE) efficiencies of New Zealand pastoral and barn dairy systems. Further, benchmarking was also performed to separate efficient and inefficient dairy farms and energy saving potential was identified for both dairy systems based upon their optimal energy consumption. For this study, the energy inputs data were taken from 50 dairy farms (including PDFs and BDFs) across Canterbury, New Zealand. The results indicated that the average technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies of pastoral (PDFs) dairy systems were 0.84, 0.90, 0.93 and for barn (BDFs) systems were 0.78, 0.84, 0.92, respectively, showing that energy efficiency is slightly better in PDFs system than the BDFs. From the total number of dairy farms 40% and 48% were efficient based on the constant return to scale and variable return to scale models, respectively. Further, the energy saving potential for PDFs and BDFs dairy systems through optimal energy consumption were identified as 23% and 35%, respectively. Thus, energy auditing, use of renewable energy and precision agricultural technology were recommended for energy efficiency improvement in both dairy systems.

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