Effects of Increasing Price of Energy Carriers on Energy Consumption in Pistachio Production: Case Study in Rafsanjan, Iran

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.