Investigations on energy input-output in below sea level rice production systems in Kuttanad region of Kerala

Abstract

A study was conducted to determine the energy inputs, energy outputs and energy indices in the Kuttanad region on Punja session of 2016-17. Seven hundred and thirty one farmers were selected for the different agro-ecological zones of Kuttanad for the study. The results shows that total input and output energy in the Kuttanad region were about 27305.87 and 114346.90 MJhaˉ1 respectively. The energy pattern consists of 43 per cent fertilizers, 18 per cent electricity, 17 per cent human labour, 11 per cent fuel, 7 per cent seed, 2 per cent machinery, and 1 per cent plant protection chemicals. The specific energy, net energy, energy efficiency and energy productivity in this region was 5.09 MJkgˉ1, 87020.97 MJhaˉ1, 4.20 and 0.19 kgMJˉ1 respectively. ANN modeling is done on the data collected to find out the changes occurring in zone wise and farm size wise and find out that all the models performed relatively well in all the regions compared to the training and testing data sets, with relatively less variability in RMSE. Model performance was best for Kayal region with very less variability in large holding and marginal holdings group, while models performed well for Vaikom Kari in medium and small holdings. The performance of the models in the remaining four regions is similar in all the holdings. The r-square performance measure for different regions showed that Northern Kuttanad, Purakad Kari and Upper Kuttanad performed well in large holding farms with majority of the simulations having r 2 closer to 1. While Kayal and Vaikom Kari had relatively less RMSE in large land holdings, the variability in r-square was found to be more. However, performance was good with less variability for both Kayal and Vaikom Kari for marginal and medium land holdings respectively. In small land holdings, models performed well in Purakad Kari region with r-square close to one. The results showed that the input energy for fertilizer is higher in the Kuttanad region. This higher input was because of the farmers practice to use high rate of fertilizer application above the PoP recommendation. By using recommended amount of fertilizer, the energy consumption and cost of production can be reduced. The second highest energy input, the electricity which can be reduced by using more efficient pump for water management. The introduction of power drum seeder will reduce the human energy input and the high cost associated with it.