Harvest optimization for sustainable agriculture: The case of tea harvest scheduling

Abstract

To ensure sustainability in agriculture, many optimization problems need to be solved. An important one of them is harvest scheduling problem. In this study, the harvest scheduling problem for the tea is discussed. The tea harvest problem includes the creating a harvest schedule by considering the farmers' quotas under the purchase location and factory capacity. Tea harvesting is carried out in cooperation with the farmer - factory. Factory management is interested in using its resources. So, the factory capacity, purchase location capacities and number of expeditions should be considered during the harvesting process. When the farmer's side is examined, it is seen that the real professions of farmers are different. On harvest days, farmers often cannot attend to their primary professions. Considering the harvest day preferences of farmers in creating the harvest schedule are of great importance for sustainability in agriculture. Two different mathematical models are proposed to solve this problem. The first model minimizes the number of weekly expeditions of factory vehicles within the factor and purchase location capacity restrictions. The second model minimizes the number of expeditions and aims to comply with the preferences of the farmers as much as possible. A sample application was performed in a region with 12 purchase locations, 988 farmers, and 3392 decares of tea fields. The results show that the compliance rate of farmers to harvesting preferences could be increased from 52% to 97%, and this situation did not affect the number of expeditions of the factory. This result shows that considering the farmers' preferences on the harvest day will have no negative impact on the factory. On the contrary, it was concluded that this situation increases sustainability and encouragement in agriculture. Furthermore, the results show that models are effective for solving the problem.