• DECISION MAKING IN AGRICULTURE: A LINEAR PROGRAMMING APPROACH

Abstract

The agricultural planning problems are important from both social and economic points of view. They involve complex interaction of vagaries of nature and economics. Agriculture contributes to nearly 25 % of GDP and about 70% of Indian population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. To meet out the food demand of increase population agricultural planning becomes inevitable. Filling up of demand-supply gap in food requirement is absolutely essential to avoid mal nutrition and under nourishment. One of the ways of achieving higher productivity is to increase the land area of the taken crop. Since the resources are scarce and limited in nature, the increased production of crops per unit area or the crop intensity must be achieved y proper utilisation of resources. Hence crop planning becomes very crucial. Optimum crop pattern with maximum profit at minimum cost is the need of the hour. With optimisation techniques available such as linear programming (LP) crop planning and efficiency of resources could be better achieved.