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Integrated Optimization Of Farmland Cultivation And Fertilizer Application: Implications For Farm Management And Food Security, Onur Boyabatli, Lusheng Shao, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the fresh produce industry, this paper studies a farmer's joint cultivation and fertilizer (a representative farm input) application decisions facing uncertainties in crop's open market price, harvesting cost, and farm yield, where yield is stochastically increasing in the fertilizer application rate. We develop a two-stage stochastic program that captures the trade offs facing a farmer growing a commodity crop in a single season to maximize the expected profit. We then use the model to evaluate the expected optimal harvest volume (a measure of food security). Our analytical analysis is complemented with numerical experiments calibrated to data. We characterize …