Abstract
Tobacco is a valuable industrial crop with significant proportion of its world production attributed to the developing countries which is currently plagued with unstable and poor energy insufficient for farmers, this necessitates the estimation of the required energy for the field operations. These energy estimates will serve as a benchmark in the mechanization of the field operations, the energy estimates were obtained via equations for quantifying both labour and mechanized field operations using data obtained from questionnaires distributed to the farmers on 3, 10 and 25 acre farms in Igboho, Iseyin and Ago-are towns in Oyo state. The data was collated and analysed, mathematical models were generated using 6th order polynomial equations. Average energy consumed for the field operations on 3 acre farms include Ploughing, 3312.02 MJ/ha; Ridging, 704.44 MJ/ha; Nursery, 355.34 MJ/ha; Harvesting, 231.96 MJ/ha; Weeding, 171.99 MJ/ha; Fertilizer application, 77.84 MJ/ha; Planting, 66.83 MJ/ha; Pest Control, 63.01 MJ/ha and Urea application, 41.51 MJ/ha, modelled best by the equation y=2.2509x6-74.797x5+958.73x4-5913.6x3+17767x2-23145x+10313 and a R2 value of 0.6901. For 10 acre farms, average energy depleted were Ploughing 9404.03 MJ/ha; Ridging, 2688.27 MJ/ha; Nursery, 345.26 MJ/ha; Harvesting, 243.44 MJ/ha; Weeding, 80.44 MJ/ha; Pest Control, 59.55 MJ/ha; Planting, 40.24 MJ/ha; Fertilizer application, 25.78 MJ/ha and Urea application, 16.89 MJ/ha demonstrated by the equationy=-9.3107x6+308.67x5-4064.5x4+26879x3-92237x2+149450x-79960 and a R2 value of 0.9947. The average energy utilized for field operations on 25 acre farms are Ploughing, 14681.91 MJ/ha; Ridging, 6270.63 MJ/ha; Harvesting, 657.50 MJ/ha; Nursery, 366.51 MJ/ha; Planting, 80.94 MJ/ha; Weeding, 66.72 MJ/ha; Pest Control, 63.01 MJ/ha; Fertilizer application, 54.16 MJ/ha and Urea application, 35.9 MJ/ha best exhibited by the mathematical equation y=-10.378x6+355.82x5-4860.4x4+33442x3-119650x2+201900x-110813 and R2 value of 0.9988. Energy-output ratio were 4.568, 3.259 and 2.250 for 3, 10 and 25 acre farms, Energy production Efficiency were 17.51%, 24.49% and 35.56% for 3, 10 and 25 acre farms respectively while Specific Energy for the tobacco producing farms were 5.710, 4.084 and 2.812 for 3, 10 and 25 acre farms respectively.
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