Crop planting and harvesting planning: Conceptual framework and sustainable multi‐objective optimization for plants with variable molecule concentrations and minimum time between harvests

Abstract

The planting and harvesting of medicinal plants have characteristics that differentiate them from other crop types and complicate their planning. For example, drug processors do not require large quantities of product to be harvested but have a high concentration of active molecules. There is no evidence for any optimization tool to support the planting and harvesting of such plants. Given this sector's importance and its impact on populations’ health, it is necessary to develop solutions to increase the sustainability of their supply chains. This paper aims to bridge this gap by proposing a conceptual framework to characterize a crop planting and harvesting planning problem, and a multi-objective optimization model for the planning of planting, harvesting, post-harvesting, distribution and storage of medicinal plants with variable concentrations of molecules and minimum time between harvests. The model optimizes three objectives aligned with sustainability: supply chain costs, concentration of molecules in plants, farmers’ perceived economic unfairness. It is validated by its application to a case study of medicinal plants in the Basilicata region (Italy). The ε-constraint method is used to obtain 11 non dominated solutions showing the possibility of eliminating farmers’ perception of economic unfairness by maintaining similar values for supply chain costs and concentrations of active molecules when planning the production of medicinal plants. Finally, the TOPSIS method is applied to select the best plan to be implemented into the supply chain.