INFLUENCE OF THE PRICE OF FUEL ON THE COST OF PERFORMING FIELD WORK BY AN AGRICULTURAL ENTERPRISE: ANALYSIS AND OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES

Abstract

As a result of the conducted research involving a wide range of agricultural machines with different numbers of bodies and, corresponding in terms of power, energy means of Soviet and foreign production, dependencies were obtained and the degree of influence of the cost of fuel on the total cost of cultivation of one hectare of field was determined. A comparison and analysis of the degree of change in the cost of agricultural work at the price of diesel fuel at the level of UAH 40/l and at the level of UAH 60/l was carried out, which showed that differences in the cost of processing between different machine units with an increase in the price of fuel become more noticeable, if their specific fuel consumption is not the same. At a fuel price of UAH 40/l, the discrepancy between MU 1 (YUMZ-6AKL + Europal 5 Lemken) and MU 5 (K-700A + Europal 9 Lemken) is 32%, and at a fuel price of UAH 60/l, this discrepancy increases to 43 %. Also, in this work, the main ways of optimizing the increased cost of field work, as a result of the increase in the price of fuel, were given and analyzed. From the above methods, an optimization method was chosen and studied in detail, the essence of which is to replace energy vehicles in the company's rolling stock from less energy-efficient models, mainly Soviet ones, to more energyefficient ones, mainly European and American ones. Cost optimization for the five upgraded machine units to be considered was in the range of 4.8 - 8.5%, and on average it was 6.5%. Under the condition of using the same agricultural machines and other parameters of the surrounding environment remaining unchanged, studies were conducted, as a result of which it was determined that due to the lower specific fuel consumption of foreign tractors, the degree of influence of fuel price changes on the total cost of agricultural work for them is significantly lower, and therefore an increase in the price of energy resources does not have such a strong impact on the profitability of an agricultural enterprise, whose fleet of energy equipment consists, for the most part, of foreign models, compared to an agricultural enterprise, whose fleet of energy equipment, for the most part, consists of Soviet and post-Soviet models. However, taking into account the importance of other optimization strategies, their implementation in combination with the replacement of less energy-efficient models of energy means will allow to achieve even more significant results in reducing the cost of field work in agriculture.