Int. J.

Production Economics 81–82 (2003) 555–558

A model of crop planning under uncertainty in agricultural

management
Takeshi Itoha,*, Hiroaki Ishiib, Teruaki Nansekic
a
Faculty of Information Sciences, University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences, 3-1, Gakuen-Nishi, Nishi, Kobe 651-2188, Japan
b
Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 3-1, 2-1, Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
c
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, 3-1, 3-1-1, Kannondai, Tsukuba 305-8666, Japan

Abstract

The crop planning problem is often formulated as a linear programming problem. But, in many actual cases, the
profit coefficients for agricultural products are not certain values because of the influence of the future weather, so a
linear programming model with constant coefficients does not describe the environment of decision making properly.
Therefore, we propose a model of crop planning with uncertain (stochastic) values which may support decision making
of agricultural farms. In this paper, we treat such uncertain elements as the values with the fuzziness and randomness.
r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Crop planning; Linear programming problem; Fuzzy constraint; Discrete random variable

1. Introduction This problem is based on a concept similar to

The amount of crops produced by agricultural
farms may influence market prices. If they produce
a crop in plenty, the market price of the crop
lowers and they cannot make much profit. Con-
versely, if they produce in a small amount, the
price may move up and consumers are struck.
Therefore, the planning of crop production in a
particular season is an extremely important task
both from an economic and an inventory manage-
ment point of view.
*Corresponding author. Faculty of Information Sciences,
University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences, 3-1,
Gakuen-Nishi, Nishi, Kobe 651-2188, Japan. Tel.: +81-78-
796-4803; fax: +81-78-794-3054.
E-mail address: takeshi@umds.ac.jp (T. Itoh).
0925-5273/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 5 - 5 2 7 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 2 8 3 - 9
the financial portfolio, that is, a farmer uses his
limited land effectively by growing various crops
as an investor distributes his funds to some
financial stocks for ‘‘low risks, high returns’’
(Nanseki, 1995; Hayashi, 2000). Of course, the
farm needs the profit information (profit coeffi-
cients) for the crops. These profit coefficients
depend upon yields, market prices and many other
factors. Therefore, they are uncertain values in the
cropping period, and this fact is also the same to
the situation that we cannot calculate capital gains
of our financial stocks in the future. It is natural to
use a stochastic analysis for the problem with
uncertain values; we may define the profit coeffi-
cients as random variables in crop planning.
Indeed this approach is an alternative, but it is
not realistic for standard farms to define coeffi-
cients as continuous random variables, because it
556 T. Itoh et al. / Int. J. Production Economics 81–82 (2003) 555–558

is so difficult and costly for them to identify the c21 x1 þ c22 x2 þ ? þ c2n xn XR; ð2Þ
density functions and/or distribution functions.
Their actual approach may be to guess the profit ^
coefficients as discrete random variables empiri- cm1 x1 þ cm2 x2 þ ? þ cmn xn XR; ð3Þ
cally from limited information such as the past
weather. Moreover, some farms hope ‘‘low risks’’ x1 ; x2 ; y; xn ; RX0:
and some do ‘‘high returns’’. However, as the profit coefficients come
In this paper, we deal with the case when profit to ci with probability pi ; constraints (1)–(3)
coefficients are assumed to be discrete random do not have to be satisfied strictly. We think
variables, and propose a more realistic and flexible it is proper to regard each constraint as the
model to maximize the minimum value of all the fuzzy constraint C; ‘‘ci1 x1 þ ci2 x2 þ ? þ cin xn is
total gains corresponding to real values of the roughly larger than R according to pi ’’ (Dubois
random variables. We use the fuzzy concept in this and Prade, 1980; Yager, 1982; Zimmermann,
model (Kruse and Dieter, 1987; Zadeh, 1965; 1991). Therefore, we reformulate the problem as
Zimmermann et al., 1984). follows:
Maximize R
subject to x1 þ x2 þ ? þ xn pL
2. Problem formulation ðLand ConstraintÞ;
We assume that the number of producible w1 x1 þ w2 x2 þ ? þ wn xn pW
kinds of crops is n and the profit coefficients ðLabor ConstraintÞ;
for them are ci1 ; ci2 ; y; cin per unit area with mC ðc11 x1 þ c12 x2 þ ? þ c1n xn ÞXp1 ;
the probability pi : We set ci ¼ ðci1 ; ci2 ; y; cin Þt : mC ðc21 x1 þ c22 x2 þ ? þ c2n xn ÞXp2 ;
The decision variable xj and the element wj of w
denote the cultivation area for crop j and the work ^
time for growing crop j at the unit area, mC ðcm1 x1 þ cm2 x2 þ ? þ cmn xn ÞXpm ;
respectively. As the land of a farm is limited, x1 þ x1 ; x2 ; y; xn ; RX0;
x2 þ ? þ xn has to be less than or equal to a
certain L (the gross of farm’s land). We call it where p1 þ p2 þ ? þ pm ¼ 1 and mC ðtÞ is the
‘‘Land Constraint’’. The total length of working membership function of the fuzzy constraint C:
time is limited, w1 x1 þ w2 x2 þ ? þ wn xn has to be We define the function
ð0ptoR % dÞ;
8
less than or equal to a certain W ; also. We call it >
> 0;
‘‘Labor Constraint’’. t%R
>
<
Since the set of profit coefficients is an n- mC ðtÞ ¼ þ 1; ðR % dptoRÞ;
> d
dimensional discrete random variable, the farm
>
ðRptÞ;
>
1;
:
will maximize the minimum value among the total
gains corresponding to all real values in considera- where d is a constant value given by the decision
tion of the worst case. Then, the following maker.
problem is considered:

Maximize R 3. Solution procedure

subject to x1 þ x2 þ ? þ xn pL
ðLand ConstraintÞ;
w1 x1 þ w2 x2 þ ? þ wn xn pW
ðLabor ConstraintÞ;
c11 x1 þ c12 x2 þ ? þ c1n xn XR;
From the linearity of mC ðtÞ;
mC ðci1 x1 þ ci2 x2 þ ?cin xn ÞXpi
is equivalent to
ð1Þ ci1 x1 þ ci2 x2 þ ?cin xn XR þ dðpi % 1Þ:
 T. Itoh et al. / Int. J. Production Economics 81–82 (2003) 555–558 557

Then, we can transform our problem as follows: blem:

Maximize R Maximize R
subject to x1 þ x2 þ ? þ xn pL subject to x1 þ x2 þ x3 þ x4 p10
ðLand ConstraintÞ; ðLand ConstraintÞ;
w1 x1 þ w2 x2 þ ? þ wn xn pW 6:9x1 þ 71:0x2 þ 2:0x3 þ 33:0x4 p260
ðLabor ConstraintÞ; ðLabor ConstraintÞ;
c11 x1 þ c12 x2 þ ? þ c1n xn 29:8x1 þ 10:4x2 þ 13:8x3 þ 19:8x4
XR þ dðp1 % 1Þ; XR þ 30ð0:1 % 1Þ;
c21 x1 þ c22 x2 þ ? þ c2n xn 23:9x1 þ 21:4x2 þ 49:2x3 þ 32:8x4
XR þ dðp2 % 1Þ; XR þ 30ð0:5 % 1Þ;
^ 37:0x1 þ 16:0x2 þ 3:6x3 þ 9:7x4
cm1 x1 þ cm2 x2 þ ? þ cmn xn XR þ 30ð0:1 % 1Þ;
XR þ dðpm % 1Þ; 19:3x1 þ 26:6x2 þ 48:4x3 þ 75:6x4
x1 ; x2 ; y; xn ; RX0: XR þ 30ð0:3 % 1Þ;
x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; RX0:
The above mentioned is a linear programming
problem and we need little effort to solve it. The optimal solutions are obtained as the farm’s
best decision:

4. Numerical example x1 ¼ 7:9; x2 ¼ 0; x3 ¼ 1:4; x4 ¼ 0:7; R ¼ 295:5:

By this decision, the farm can earn the total

For example, a farm is going to grow carrot,
gains
radish, cabbage and Chinese cabbage in a season.
Let those cultivation areas be x1 ; x2 ; x3 and x4 268:5; 280:5; 303:8 and 274:5
(unit: 10 acres ¼ 1000 m2 ), respectively. The farm
has the total land of 100 acres and the total work in the cases c1 ; c2 ; c3 and c4 ; respectively.
time of 260 hours: Setting the profit coefficients Now, if we consider the model maximizing
(unit: 10 000 Japanese yen) and work times for the the minimum total gain without the probabilities
crops, and the membership function mC ðtÞ of the for the real values of four profit coefficient
fuzzy constraint as in Table 1 and Fig. 1, we can sets in the numerical example, the four constraints
consider the following linear programming pro- except for the land, labor and non-negative

Table 1
Profit coefficients and work times

Random variable ci Carrotðci1 Þ Radishðci2 Þ Cabbageðci3 Þ C: cabbageðci4 Þ Pro: pi ð%Þ

c1 29.8 10.4 13.8 19.8 10

c2 23.9 21.4 49.2 32.8 50
c3 37.0 16.0 3.6 9.7 10
c4 19.3 26.6 48.4 75.6 30

Work time w 6.9 71.0 2.0 33.0 —

558 T. Itoh et al. / Int. J. Production Economics 81–82 (2003) 555–558
Fig. 1. Membership function mC ðtÞ:
constraint are
29:8x1 þ 10:4x2 þ 13:8x3 þ 19:8x4 XR;
23:9x1 þ 21:4x2 þ 49:2x3 þ 32:8x4 XR;
37:0x1 þ 16:0x2 þ 3:6x3 þ 9:7x4 XR;
19:3x1 þ 26:6x2 þ 48:4x3 þ 75:6x4 XR;
and we can obtain the optimal solutions as
follows:
x1 ¼ 8:1; x2 ¼ 0; x3 ¼ 1:0 and x4 ¼ 0:9:
Then, the corresponding total gains are
272:8 for the case of c1 ; c2 and c4 ;
and 311:6 for c3 :
From this result, we can find that the total gains
corresponding to the solutions for the high
probability cases of p2 ¼ 0:5 and p4 ¼ 0:3 in the
numerical example are larger than that of the
above. This shows that the optimal solutions by
our model accommodate to the situation which is
apt to occur actually and implies the validity of
our model.
5. Conclusion
We have proposed the crop planning model
maximizing the minimum total gain according to
the probabilities for the n-dimensional discrete
random variables defined as the profit coefficients.
As an extension of the model, we will think of the
crop-wise random variable definition for each
profit coefficient. However, since the profit coeffi-
cients for crops are not exactly independent of
each other, we must use a different approach.
Recently, the research about agricultural man-
agement have not only optimized the profit, but
also considered the environment. Usually, the
agricultural planning is divided between the farm
level model and the regional level model, and the
environment problem is often discussed in the
regional model because of its larger scale. More-
over, since farms in a region tend to cultivate
similar kind crops, the regional crop planning
contributes to the stabilization of the price.
Therefore, considering the availability of data for
the environment and/or the economy, we will
extend this research to a regional model, also.
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