Crop profit optimization for farmers

Abstract

A tool was created to perform a systems analysis in order to optimize a farmer's profit based on the decisions that are faced during the planting season. The tool was created in Python so that it can be used on most computers without added cost to the user. This tool is a program that contains a database of crop needs in terms of required growing area per plant, water per plant, and growing time. The database also houses crop characteristics such as seed cost and average weight per plant. The program also prompts the user for the constraint values. These constraint values include water availability, amount of usable land, weight transportation limits, time to market, distance to local market, and local crop prices per pound. The input constraints allow the user to tailor the program to their specific conditions. If adopted during a farmer's decision period before the planting season, this optimization tool can analyze the parameters that are being faced in order to maximize profits. The current version of the program makes five key assumptions in order to form a problem with a computable solution. When all inputs have been entered, the tool computes the optimal combination of plants that can be grown in the given time frame that will maximize the farmer's profits at market.