Agricultural Land Apportionment through Goal Programming

Abstract

Predominance of agriculture is the third major problem of Indian economy. The economic contribution of agriculture to India's GDP is gradually on the way out with the country's broad-based economic growth. Lack of agricultural planning, monsoon failure, lack of water supply, lack of quality seeds, lack of fertilizers, lack of proper planning of apportionment of agricultural land and many more are the reasons for decrease of agricultural economic growth in India. This research work is an attempt to reveal the potential of goal programming for Agricultural land apportionment on a drought prone model district Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh, India. It also intends the agricultural land apportionment for various major crops. The specific priorities used in the current goal programming problem are maximum utilization of agricultural land in the district, utilization of maximum available water sources, duration of the yield and needs of the district. This model of goal programming is solved by framing an objective function defined by the decision-maker and by converting the desired priority goals into linear constraints by introducing underachievement (di-) and overachievement (di+). The purpose of this research paper is to present the application of goal programming for the optimization of agricultural land apportionment and there by overcoming agrarian unsolved problems of drought prone districts of not only India, but also of the globe. This may even lead the drought prone districts to contribute directly or indirectly to the economy.