1. A modern appro ach to determining the optimal farm production structure. LP case study. Andrzej Mazurkiewicz Independent consultant, Warsaw Agicultural University, Katedra Ekonometrii i Informatyki, andrzej@mazurkiewicz.org

2. Contents A farm of the “Plant Breeding and Acclimatization Experimental Station” has been used for the work. A web application has been used for generation of linear model of the farm. The optimal production structure has been determined. A Return of Investment analysis has been carried out. A number of prices changes scenarios have been simulated.

3. Situation and needs of farmers (in EU at least) Situation of farmers.  Unstable market situation.  Worsening production costs/products prices relations. Global competition. Needs.  Farmers need to get a relatively simple tool that would assist while doing a strategic planning, to survive in changing environment.  An interface of this tool should be as much “farmer- friendly” as possible.

4. A goal of the application development To enable every educated farmer to apply linear programming technique on his own. I. e.:  to construct linear model of his/her farm;  to analyse different scenarios of ROI;  to analyse different weather conditions scenarios;  to analyse different price scenarios. In the future:  to carry out the above analyses of multi-year scenarios

5. The application - modules Specialized database for farm production parameters. Screen forms for data entry. Input data reports, inconsistency reports. Model generator. Optimizer. Reports of optimal production structure.

6. Production activities of the farm Subfarm Radzików: 400 ha; winter and spring wheat, spring barley, silage maize, rape, sugar beet, corn-grass mixture, grass; milk cows. Subfarm Młochów: 480 ha; winter and spring wheat, spring barley, triticale, maize, rape, sugar beet. Seed material of inter and spring wheat, spring barley, triticale, maize, rape, sugar beet is produced as well.

7. ROI analysis Additional standings for calves, 500 sq. m. available from spring to autumn. Increase of the objective function 1673 euro/year – seems to contradict with high beef prices.

8. Occupation of additional standings (extract from standard application report)

9. Influence of the production costs raise (objective function)

10. Influence of the production costs raise (crops structure)

11. Influence of the production costs raise (seed material crops structure)

12. Summary The simulations using the application have presented results that are not obvious, what is really valuable. Farmers seem to be able to manage input interface. While debugging the model, the aid of an expert might be necessary. Reports seem to be enough “farmer-friendly”. An IT technology that has been applied in the application has presented itself as robust enough while working with a poor Internet connection (about 100 byte/s transmission rate).

13. References from the modeled farm Instytut Hodowli i Aklimatyzacji Roślin Jacek Sawicki (Russian, English) js@zdhar.pl +48-601-394246

14. Thank you!

15. Example - structure of a breeding operation