Application of Linear Programming in an Analysis of Economic Changes in Farming

Abstract

T HIS article is based on a milk supply adjustment study. A primary objective was to test the use of linear programming techniques on the problems of farmers: how useful it would be for telling farmers what production adjustments would pay in response to changes in technical and economic conditions. The empirical results illustrate particular extensions in the application of programming techniques, but, more important, the results are of interest from two viewpoints: first, they indicate profitable lines of change in production when facing a range of changes in conditions of factor supply, prices of labor, prices of milk, and technical possibilities. Second, they offer reasonable explanations of changes taking place in important sectors in the southern states. The data were drawn largely from dairy farms in the Piedmont areas of North Carolina, but the empirical results should also apply in general to the much larger Piedmont region of the South and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to the larger areas in which cotton and tobacco are major crops. Production of milk for fluid use increased rapidly on these farms in the North Carolina Piedmont areas between I949 and I954. Expansion of dairying was accompanied by certain changes: enlargement of smaller farms by the renting of additional land, an increase in production of pasture and hay, shifts from lower-producing breeds to the Holstein breed, elimination of cotton or tobacco on many of the dairy farms, reduction in labor supply, and an increase in use of tractors. Assumptions