Optimum Allocation of Agricultural Land to the Vegetable Crops under Uncertain Profits using Fuzzy Multiobjective Linear Programming

Abstract

Decision making in agriculture had been embedded with a scientific planning for higher yields to cater the needs of overwhelming population and higher benefits for the prosperity of the farmers. The optimal cropping pattern that is allocation of land to various crops by making use of limited resources has become majorchallenge to fetch higher profits. Traditionally, farmers have relied on experience, intuition and comparisons with their neighbors to make decisions regarding cropping pattern. Basically,profit is a function of many factors which are sometimes beyond our control; hence intuitionand experience do not guarantee the optimal (maximum) profits. Many researches provided the optimum cropping patterns using Linear Programming (LP) technique in case of fixed prices (profits) of crops. But volatility in prices is very high for vegetable crops (cash crops) due to their expensive cultivation with high risk of profitability despite enhanced profits over food crops.Uncertainty in prices has countless impact on net returns ofcrops in agriculture. This paper aimed to provide a procedure for handling the volatility in profits of vegetable crops using Fuzzy Multi objective Linear Programming (FMOLP) along with step wise procedure to solve the model very easily using solver tool in MS-Excel. Numerical example cited in this paper is based on crisp profit coefficients and their chance of occurrence (probability) observedover period.