The Optimal Felling Rate in the Palm Oil Plantation System

Abstract

Successful palm oil plantation should have high returns profit, clean and environmental friendly. Since oil palm trees have a long life and it takes years to be fully grown, controlling the felling rate of the palm oil trees is a fundamental challenge. It needs to be addressed in order to maximize oil production. However, a good arrangement of the felling palm oil trees may still affect the amount of carbon absorption. The objective of this study is to develop an optimal felling model of the palm oil plantation system taking into account both oil production and carbon absorption. The model facilitates in providing the optimal control of felling rate that results in maximizing both oil production and carbon absorption. With this aim, the model is formulated considering palm oil biomass, carbon absorption rate, oil production rate and the average prices of carbon and oil palm. A set of real data is used to estimate the parameters of the model and numerical simulation is conducted to highlight the application of the proposed model. The resulting parameter estimation is solved that leads to an optimal control of felling rate problem.