Investigating the relationship between Cultivation's age and total factor productivity of sugar cane production (Case study of Imam Khomeini agro-industry, Shooshtar)

The decline of government in supporting sugar cane industries and the dumping of competitor countries' sugar prepared the ground for the large sugar-cane agro-industries to face with the problem of losing their profitability. Hence, currently to protect the employment rates of Khuzestan province, and to continue the grasp of investments benefits from past sugar cane cultivation, from among the available solutions, considering the productivity augmentation, and improvement of the province’s production power in its agro-industries seems to be the best solutions for the protection of such industries in the ground of competition. Thus, here the determination of some effecting factors on total factor productivity of sugar cane production, and the effects of intensity of these factors are tried to present some solutions for the minimization of the effects of increasing age of the shoots on productivity decline. In this study, stratified sampling method were applied to select three varieties of the early (CP57-614), the clay (CP48-103) and the late (CP69-1062) of sugar cane (planted in this cultivation and farming industry in 2006) and 191 units of 530 farming units (planted in the year). The results showed that total productivity of production factors of sugar cane will increase by decreases in current water consumption rate, increases in the scales of the units, more consumption of nitrate fertilizers and machinery, some delays in harvesting time of the arable units, and missing the harvest of future year,. Also, the reciprocal effects of age with other factors indicated that the larger units with older ages are more productive. Younger units should be harvested at the beginning of the harvesting season, and the older units at the end.