Journal of Experimental Agriculture International

Aims: The field experiment was framed to estimate the energy input-output, energy use efficiency, net energy gain and other energy indices for the main and allied components of rainfed integrated farming system.

Place and Duration of Study: The present experiment was carried out in 1 ha area at AICRP for Dryland Agriculture Research, Dr. PDKV Akola during 2022-2023.

Methodology: Assessment of energy use patterns of different enterprises on the basis of resource inputs and outputs converted from physical to energy unit (MJ) through various published conversion coefficients.

Results: The appropriate combination of different components, the total energy input of integrated rainfed farming model was calculated to be 13.42 GJ and total energy output obtained as 69.23 GJ, and resulted in energy use efficiency ratio as 4.75.  The crop cultivation contributes about 51.34 % to total energy input, which was 6.89 GJ followed by livestock and horticulture respectively. The chickpea + coriander (4:1) cropping system exhibited the highest total energy input among the various cropping systems, due to electricity consumption for irrigation. Fertilizer, diesel and labour energy inputs comprise more to total energy input in cropping system while labour input energy contributed to highest in livestock components. The direct energy sources are to be found more in livestock components as 2.82 followed by crops and field crops recorded highest indirect energy is 4.12. Similarly, renewable and non-renewable energy sources were utilized in goat rearing and field crops as 3.81 GJ and 7.48 GJ, respectively. The energy use efficiency ratio was estimated, highest in Alternate land use system (13.46) and lowest from horticulture (0.47).  This could be because horticulture and poultry farming are the least energy-efficient agricultural production systems, as horticulture generates negative energy mileage. The energy efficiency ratio for the primary output indicates that field crops and different land use systems produced higher energy productivity. The highest net energy gain was observed from field crops. The analysis of human energy profitability showed that crop farming was the most energy-efficient, achieving a HEP ratio of 88.85, with ALU and compost following in profitability.

Conclusion: Energy budgeting in agricultural production systems is essential to identify the best practices based on the performance of system evaluated by various energy indices. The present study revealed that integration field crops, horticultural crops and livestock, compost, kitchen garden and farm pond in different combinations can be promoted and adopted in Western Plateau and Hills of India.