Allocation of Agricultural Land to the Major
Crops of Saline Track By Linear Programming
Approach Using Python Language
Coleen Chris Allanna Lambatan Go
College of Engineering, Industrial
Engineering Department
Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan,
Philippines, Cagayan de Oro City 9000
coleengo12@gmail.com
Abstract — This paper utilizes a case study that is
carried out in the saline track of the rain fed zone of
Murtizapur Tahsil of Akola District, Maharashtra;
India. Wherein, a Linear programming technique is
applied to determine the optimum land allocation to 10
major crops of the saline track of the rain red zone
using agricultural data, with respect to various factors
viz. cost of seeds, cost of fertilizers/pesticides, yield of
crops, daily wages of labor, and machine charges,
selling base price of commodities, for the period
2009-2010. The LP model is solved by Python Xpress.
Solutions are compared based on the original case
study using Lingo. It is observed that the linear
program model is appropriate for finding the optimal
land allocation to the major crops of the study area.
Keywords— Land allocation, Simplex Algorithm,
Python Xpress, saline track
INTRODUCTION
Agriculture planning issues are significant from both a
social and economic standpoint. They entail complicated
linkages between nature and economics. Agriculture
accounts for almost 25% of GDP, and agriculture provides
a living for over 70% of the Indian people.Agricultural
planning has been increasingly essential in recent years,
owing to rising demand for agricultural goods as a result
of population growth. Agricultural economics, which
deals with scientific planning for agricultural growth, has
grown to be a significant field of study in agriculture. The
optimal crop pattern with the highest profit is critical
Marielle Joi Cediño Reyes
College of Engineering, Industrial Engineering
Department
Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan,
Philippines, Cagayan de Oro City 9000
mariellereyes727@gmail.com
information for agricultural planning utilizing
optimization models. The model requires crop output,
manpower, production cost, and physical soil type. With
optimization techniques such as Linear Programming
(LP), Dynamic Programming (DP), and Genetic
Algorithm (GA) available, the LP model is more common
due to the proportional nature of the allocation problems.
The most important work in the saline track of the rain fed
zone is agricultural planning, because the whole
agriculture industry is dependent on the monsoon. The
second section of this paper provides a review of previous
studies, the third section explains the area of the study, the
fourth section presents the formulation of the model, the
fifth section elaborates on the application of the model to
the proposed case study, the sixth section discusses the
solution to the problem, and the seventh section concludes
the paper.
PROBLEM
Saline Track
The saline track of the Murtizapur Tahsil, district Akola,
of Maharashtra (India) is taken as the study region to
demonstrate the model. The tahsil consists of 165 villages
and its geographical area is 789.43 sq. km. out of which
783.93 sq. km. is rural and 5.50 sq. km. the urban area.
The total population of the rural area is 167312. The
geographical region of this tahsil can be divided into two
parts viz. saline and non saline areas. Our study is
restricted to saline areas only. In the study area, the
agriculture totally depends on the monsoon and this region
 falls in an assured rain fall zone and receives monsoon
during June to October. The average annual rainfall in the
study area is 714.1 mm spread over 44 rainy days in
normal condition. The total area for cultivation purpose is
68595.19 hectares out of which 4403.811 hectares of area
are irrigated. Thus the area under cultivation considered
for study is 64191.379 hectares. Mainly there are two
seasons for agriculture in the state of Maharashtra. The
first season of crops is from June to October, termed as
Kharip, the second season from October/November to
April, termed as Rabbi. The main crops in the first season
are Cotton, Jowar, Arhar (Tur, a type of pulses), Green
Gram (Moong), Soya bean, Black Gram (Urid),
Sunflower, Safflower (Karadi), while Gram and wheat are
the major crops taken in second season. The crops of
Green Gram (Moong), Soya bean, Black Gram (Urid) are
short period crops i.e. 90 to 110 days. Therefore the land
used for these crops is again used for the various crops in
the second season viz. gram and wheat. Hence the total
area under gram and wheat will be equal to the total area
under the crops Green Gram (Moong), Soya bean and
Black Gram (Urid). The data regarding the production of
crops (qtl./hectare), use of land (hectare), requirement of
labor (man-days/hectare), requirement of machinery
(hrs./hectare), and cash (Rs.) requirement for all crops
throughout the year have been collected from the various
sources such as the Revenue Department of the
Murtizapur tahsil, Directorate of Economics and Statistics,
APMC Murtizapur, Department of Agriculture Zillah
Parishad, Akola, PDKV Akola and personal surveys with
the training and visit supervisors and the farmers. The set
of variables , estimates of various factors and the values of
right hand side constants for building the model are
presented in the table (1), table (2) and table (3)
respectively.
Table No. (1): Table of Variables
Crop Cotton Arhar Green Soya Jowar
Variabl (pulses) Gram bean
e X1,1 X1,2 X1,3 X1,4 X1,5
Crop Black Safflower Sunflower Gram Wheat
Variabl Gram
e X1,6 X1,7 X1,8 X2,1 X2,2
LINEAR PROGRAM MODEL
i. Objective Function
For maximization of Net Profit: The decision maker
must allocate the complete available acreage to crops in
order to maximize overall profit. As a result, the
objective function is as follows;
Maximize Z = ∑2s= 1∑cc= 1 NPscXsc
ii. Formulation of Constraints
The constraints from C1 to C8 are formulated as under;
C1. For the total Yield: The decision maker's goal will
be to maximize the overall predicted output from the
crops. This constraint will be written as the sum of the
product of area under the crop and estimate of yield per
unit area of the crop in the given season should be larger
than the predicted total yield from all crops. This
limitation is as follows;
∑2s= 1∑Cc= 1 YscXsc≥ ∑Cc= 1Tc
C2. Labour Requirement: Agricultural labor is
necessary throughout the year. The sum of the product
of the expected number of labors necessary and the area
of the crop 'c' in the season's' should be smaller than the
total number of labors available throughout the year.
∑2s= 1∑Cc= 1 WscXsc≤ ∑2s= 1AWs
C3. Machine-hours: Machines are required in
agriculture for a variety of purposes, including
ploughing, seeding, cultivating, harvesting, tilling, and
so on. The overall number of machine–hours necessary
for various crops during the season should not exceed
the entire number of machine–hours available during the
season. As a result, this is stated as
∑2s= 1∑Cc= 1 MHscXsc≤ TMHsc
C4. Cost of Pesticides and fertilizers: Regular
pesticide and fertilizer applications are essential to
maximize crop output. Because the quantity available
for this purpose is restricted, this limitation is stated as
follows:
∑2s= 1∑Cc= 1 CPHscXsc≤ TAPHs
C5. Availability of cultivable Land: The entire
amount of cultivable land is set and restricted. As a
result, the complete cultivable area must not be
allocated to all crops during the season. This applies
the restriction as follows:
∑Cc= 1 Xsc≤ Ts
C6. Constraint on seed cost: Every farmer does not
compromise on seed quality, thus they are unconcerned
about cost-cutting measures. As a result, this limitation
is phrased as follows:
∑2s= 1∑Cc= 1 SCscXsc ≥ 0
C7. Constraint on usage of area in season 1 and
season 2: Farmers allocate the total available land to the
 crops which grow in first season s1 out of which some EXPLANATION OF THE CODE
fixed predetermined area of land is used for short period Explicit Formulation
crops. Let it be Ucs% of the total cultivable land and the
same land is reused for the crops in the second season ● On this part of the code, we declare our problem
s2. It means that farmers allocate Ucs% of total land to model which we name here as “Land
crops viz. Green Gram (Moong), Soya bean and Black Allocation”.
Gram (Urid). (Generally UCS= 0.395). Thus this
imposes the constraint as; ‘

𝑋13 + 𝑋14 + 𝑋16 ≤ 𝑈𝑠𝑐 * 𝑇𝑠𝑐

C8. Upper/Lower Boundaries for Area under the

crop: The decision maker can set the lower and/or ● We then set our parameters
bounds for the area under crops throughout the season in
such a way that both the economic needs of farmers and
the food needs of society are met. These limitations can
be expressed as follows:

𝑋𝑠𝑐 ≤ 𝐿𝑠𝑐 𝑠 = 1, 2 𝑐 = 1, 2,,, 10

and/or ● We declare our variables which are our crops

𝑋𝑠𝑐 ≥ 𝐿𝑠𝑐 𝑠 = 1, 2 𝑐 = 1, 2,,, 10 (cotton, arhar, green gram, soya bean, jowar,
black gram, safflower, sunflower, wheat and
gram) and we assign names for them which are
A-J respectively.
SOLUTION
The final LP model for land allocation problem in the
study area is solved using Python Xpress
Table No. (1):- Table of Solutions (All
figures are in hectares) ● In this part of the code, we establish our
Crop Variabl Algorithm Used Allocati constraints which are the total yield, labor
e on of requirement, machine-hours. cost of pesticides
Push-Pull Simplex land (in and fertilizers, availability of cultivable land,
%) constraint on seed cost, constraint on usage of
area in season 1 and season 2, and upper/lower
Cotton X1,1 13791.55 13791.55 21.49 boundaries for area under the crop respectively.
Arhar X1,2 8643.606 8643.606 13.47
Green X1,3 10250.75 10250.75 15.97
Gram X1,4 11604.34 11604.34 18.08
Soya X1,5 9500.000 9500.000 14.8
bean X1,6 3500.500 3500.500 5.45
Jowar X1,7 4297.746 4297.746 6.7
Black X1,8 511.6349 511.6349 0.8
Gram X2,1 25355.59 25355.59 39.5
Safflower X2,2 0.000000 0.000000 0.0
Sunflo
wer
Gram ● Here, we define our objective function which is
Wheat to maximize our z or in this case, our profit by
optimizing our land and allocating them to
Iterations 20 11 certain crops for plantation.
Compact Formulation
● We set our parameters for the compact
formulation.
● We again declare our variables but this time in a
more compacted form.
● After we declare our variables, we set our
parameters and range for our constraints but this
time in an array format.
F. FINAL ANSWER AND CONCLUSION
● We have our objective function which is to
maximize profit by allocating land to crops but in
this part, it is done in an array format, and we get
the solution to generate the answer.
● Below are the exact hectares of land we should
allocate for each crop as generated from the
formulation above. We allocate the largest
amount of land hectares of 25355.59 to the gram
crop and the lowest is 0 land hectares for the land
crop. If we follow this certain and exact land
allocation for each of the crops, we come up with
our maximum profit of 905, 217, 851.23.
ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION
Given the variables and various constraints of this study,
we can see below the hectares of land that should be
allocated for each crop. The largest hectare of land should
be allocated for the gram crop, followed by cotton crop,
soya bean, green gram, jowar, arhar. safflower, black
gram, and sunflower. We can also see that zero hectares of
land are allocated to the wheat crop. If we follow these
certain and exact land allocation to the crops, we can
generate our maximum profit of 905, 217, 851.23.
In conclusion, the answers generated from Lingo and
Python Xpress are the same. We can also see from the
answers generated from our formulation above that exact
hectares of land need to be allocated to certain crops in
order to maximize the profit. Thus, we can say how much
LP models and solutions are of great help even in the
agricultural industry. They help to optimize resources in
order to maximize the profit and come up with the best
approach.
REFERENCES
[1] O, W. M., & S, L. H. (2012). Allocation of
Agricultural Land To The Major Crops of Saline
Track By Linear Programming Approach: A Case
Study. International Journal of Scientific &
Technology Research, 1(9), 21–25.
 http://www.ijstr.org/paper-references.php?ref=IJSTR
-1012-5417

[2] FICO xpress optimization examples repository:

Knapsack problem. (n.d.). Retrieved May 23, 2022,
from
https://examples.xpress.fico.com/example.pl?id=Kna
psack_python