Indian Journal of Ecology

Efficient use of energy resources in agriculture is one of the pre-requisites for sustainable agricultural production. Energy intensive paddy cultivation is blamed for several ecological problems of the Indian Punjab. In this backdrop, the present study was carried out to measure the energy use pattern in paddy cultivation across different farm categories along with identification of wasteful uses and calculation of energy use efficiency (EUE) in Punjab during 2018–19. The total energy expended in paddy cultivation was 47014.69 MJ/ha and the average energy use showed an inverse relationship with the farm size. Among different energy sources, chemical fertilizers were the dominant ones (42%) followed by electricity consumption for irrigation (36.05%), machine energy (18%), diesel fuel (17%), human labour (1.36%) and FYM (1.11%).The use of chemical, mechanical and electrical energy varied positively with the farm size while it varied negatively for human and animal labour, seed and FYM. Net energy gain was estimated at 0.175 million MJ/ha. High EI of 6.77 MJ/Kg with a low energy productivity index of 0.148 kg/MJ indicated that there is room for improving energy productivity. The EUE for small farmers (4.98) was the highest. Very high use of NRE and commercial energy was observed which could be harmful to the environment and ecology in the long run.