Managing bio-farm energy in agro-ecosystem: An interpretation through energy balances and consumption pattern
2021
Mondal, Kabita | Haque, Monirul | Pal, Tanmoy | Pal, Apurba | Ācār, Es. Ke.
Energy is the main text of agricultural modernization as well as civilization as a whole. The energy consumption pattern is an indicator on the kind and nature of energy balances in ‘social ecology’ where we have to organize all sets of factor productions. The indiscriminate consumption of energy, as has been reflected in water management, soil and nutrient management even in part of processing agriculture, will lead to a catastrophic ecology in Indian farming. The agricultural productivity is declining at a faster rate, when the need of food security cropped up as the most belligerent issue. The huge pull up of ground water, burning of crop residues and indiscriminate mechanization of farmer may be held responsible for a negative energy balance. Keeping in view on this aspect, the present study was held on bio farm energy management at Swarnachalida village of Burdwan district in West Bengal, India. It includes two dependent variables i.e. crop energy balance (y1), cattle energy balance (y2) to be estimated through a set of 13 exogenous variables i.e. age (x1), education (x2), family size (x3), gender ratio (x4), per capita annual income (x5), farm size (x6), occupation (x7), no. of fragments (x8), cropping intensity(x9), total no. of livestock (x10),amount of cow dung applied in farm(x11), stubble height(x12) and irrigation index (x13). The 70 number of respondents have been selected through both purposive and random sampling approaches to ultimately derive and elicit their behavioural traits in characterizing the energy balances of social, economic, physical and ecological setup. The results show that following factors, Family and Farm size, Per capita annual income and Total number of livestock in farm have led to consciousness about the energy balances in social ecology and impact of these energy balances on the ecosystem as whole. This study has been a modest attempt to audit on the happening energy metabolism, that is, a subtle balance between energy invested and energy generated from per unit farm functioning. This will ultimately scale up sustainable production function in agriculture and allied sectors with ecological implication as well. So, level of energy consumption and the elements of modernity are also to be reticulated and operationally orchestrated.
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