Abstract:
As one of the most important products of Iran, pist
achio has a significant share in non-
oil revenues. Its annual foreign exchange earnings
are over 800 million dollars. However,
production of this nut in the country’s major produ
ction centers is faced with many
problems regarding the efficiency and productivity
of the inputs. This study was
performed by using two-stage cluster sampling metho
d. The results showed that with the
increase in energy carriers’ prices, the farmers of
the region would tend to use the
optimal amounts of inputs in the long term, thus, r
educing energy consumption from
46,016.72 to 31,092 MJ ha
-1
. Also, the present values of energy productivity,
its efficiency,
and specific energy of, respectively, 0.03, 0.42, a
nd 35.05 MJ kg
-1
would be optimized to
0.07, 1.10 and 13.47 MJ kg
-1
. Besides, it was revealed that the net energy, whi
ch was
negative under the existing condition (-26,532 MJ),
would increase to 3,160 MJ following
the increase in the price of energy carriers. Above
all, the non-renewable energy
consumption would be reduced from 39,743 to 26,457
MJ. Of course, to achieve the
mentioned results, government support of farmers in
the short term is necessary in order
to facilitate and expedite the change in technology
.
Keywords
: Energy carriers, Input-output, Price elasticity,
Pistachio production, Profit
maximization.
