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Alfalfa Harvesting System Essays

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3. Results and discussion
3.1. Analysis of input-output energy use in different alfalfa harvesting systems
Table 3 shows the inputs and output in different alfalfa harvesting systems. The results indicated diesel fuel and human labor for alfalfa silage production was lower than alfalfa hay production, but the machinery was higher. As it can be seen in table 3 output was determined as 6865.28 Kg ha-1 for alfalfa silage production which more than alfalfa hay production (5721.07 Kg ha-1). Differences in alfalfa yields were related to different cutting in different harvesting systems.
Table 4 displays the energy values for inputs and output in different alfalfa harvesting systems. The total energy requirements for producing the alfalfa hay and …show more content…

Diesel fuel and machinery management seemed to be the most significant areas for improving energy efficiency.
The consumption of alfalfa hay and alfalfa silage human labor was 0.92% and 0.71%, respectively. Similar results have been reported in the literature implying that the energy input of human labor has a little share of total energy input in agricultural production [20, 21, 30, 31].
The other inputs applied in the different harvesting systems in the surveyed area are shown in Table 4. The share of each energy input of total input energy for two yields are shown in Fig. 1.
To evaluate the harvesting systems it is necessary to calculate and compare the energy use efficiency index. Table 5 shows energy indices (energy ratio, energy productivity, specific energy and net energy) and the distribution of energy inputs according to direct, indirect, renewable, and non-renewable energy forms.
Energy use efficiency (energy ratio) for alfalfa hay and alfalfa silage were calculated as 4.15 and 5.00, respectively, which showed energy use is efficient in the research area.
The results indicated that the energy ratio value of alfalfa silage production was higher than alfalfa hay production. As seen Table 5, alfalfa silage production had better energy indices (energy ratio, energy productivity, specific energy, and net energy). More output energy was the most important reason for this occurrence. Tsatsarelis and Koundouras [2] calculated the energy

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