Performance evaluation of agricultural inputs in crop production of Zahak Payame Noor university agricultural faculty farm by linear programming

Abstract

Farm management is one of the most critical factors in production and marketing of agricultural crops. In a broad description, management is defined as making decision process through which the limited resources are allocated to competent items in such a way that the determined goal can be achieved. Generally, organizing and controlling the resources of an agricultural unit toward the maximum potential benefits and expected revenues is the main task of farm manager. Furthermore, by increasing population and demand for agricultural crops and relative resource shortages, it will be obvious that efficient input utilization is essential. Today, management science using mathematical programming especially linear programming encourages managers for much more efficient decisions in the field of allocating limited resources to competent activities. Hence, linear programming technique serves as a means for choosing the highest performance items; that is, the items having the highest output to input ratio. Since decision making is crucial in management process, if the linear programming parameter (facilities, limitations, performance and costs) are estimated accurately, the results will have a profound effect on the decision making of the production unit. Keywords: Inputs, agriculture, production, linear programming.