Farm management information system: Case study

Abstract

Copyright © 2017 for this paper by its author Through the development and adoption of a Farm Management Information System (FMIS) that incorporates linear and non-linear optimization, this paper investigates whether FMISs are a suitable tool for significantly improving of the overall profitability of a medium-sized and diversified farm. Consequently, profit maximization and cost efficiency are the solitary aims. The developed linear and nonlinear models consider all production processes and services of the selected case study farm that is located in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Particular attention is paid to the farm’s internal interconnections between the different production processes and its services as well as the resulting synergy effects. This paper shows that at a given price level for input and output factors, it is possible to increase the annual gross profit on this farm from 292,812 EUR to 342,461 EUR, which represents a rise of 17.0%. This improvement can be achieved by solitarily optimizing the farm’s allocation of the available resources.