MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR FARM PLANNING IN SOME SELECTED SMALL-SCALE FARMS IN NAVRONGO, GHANA

Abstract

The small-scale agricultural sector makes a substantial contribution to a country's economic growth. The goal of this research is to create a multi-objective optimization model for farm planning that maximize returns whilst minimizing labour cost for optimal land use. To do this, three optimization models were developed using the weighted sum and epsilon-constraint method for multi-objective programming and solved by optimization techniques, using a management scientist software version 6.0. These three models were discussed in detailed and tested using data collected from some selected small-scale vegetables, cereals and legume farmers in some parts of Navrongo in the Kesena Nankana Municipality of the Upper East region of Ghana. Model 1 suggested an optimal land use and an increased in returns for all the test it was employed on. Also model 2 showed an increased in returns in all test cases while suggesting an optimal land use as well. Furthermore, model 3 showed a decreased in cost of employing labour whiles suggesting an optimal land usage. In all cases, the models were found to be robust for both the vegetables, cereal and legume farming through the sensitivity analysis done for the range of values for the coefficients of the decision variables and the constraints. In general, the developed models helped the small-scale farmers to maximize returns as well as minimizing the cost of labour whilst proposing optimal use of the farm land. Consequently, it is recommended that future works could consider adding other parameters like fertilizers application or type of fertilizer used, soil type, water requirements, etc. to see how the model will work.