Energy Budgeting and Efficiency Analysis of Organic Cotton: A DEA Approach

Background: Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is crop of economic importance in global and national scale. India is the greatest producer of quality cotton, the third largest exporter and the second largest consumer. Conventional cotton farming creates environmental pressures and negative impact on public health. Organic farming is the sustainability option in cotton production. Cotton is the energy intensive crop, which uses high amount of input energy to produce seed cotton. Hence, energy budgeting is highly essential for better energy utilization and resource conservation and also measuring the input use efficiency of a farm/agronomic practices is vitally important in present day Indian agriculture. Methods: Sensing the economic importance of cotton, ten number of eco-friendly, ecologically safe organic nutrient management (ONM) practices were framed and field experiment was conducted in split plot design with two main plots (M) and five subplots (S) and replicated thrice. The direct and indirect energy used in different ONM practices were computed and energy coefficients were computed from energy equivalents and that has been used as inputs to generate efficiency coefficients by using an input oriented DEA approach. Result: Energy budgeting on field operation basis reported that, the field preparation and irrigation operation uses most of the energy (in non-renewable forms) which needs attention and there is the scope to find alternative energy conservation systems. Results on input use efficiency reported that the ONM practice, double green manuring followed by cotton and application of well decomposed poultry manure and foliar application of fermented fish extract at 5% concentration at 25 and 35 DAS are 100% efficient in terms of technical CRS, technical VRS, scale, allocative and cost efficiencies. This organic nutrient management practice would produce optimum output from the least amount of input and would be ideal for sustainable cotton production.