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

As one of the most important products of Iran, pistachio has a significant share in nonoil revenues. Its annual foreign exchange earnings are over 800 million dollars. However, production of this nut in the country’s major production centers is faced with many problems regarding the efficiency and productivity of the inputs. This study was performed by using two-stage cluster sampling method. 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, reducing 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, and 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, which 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.

Energy carriers, Input-output, Price elasticity, Pistachio production, Profit maximization.