EVALUATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF FARM MACHINERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN WONJI SHOA SUGAR ESTATE

Abstract

Machinery selection is a vital element in planning, implementation and operation of agricultural services used in large or small scale mechanized schemes. The major problem is inability to select implements as per the size that can easily fit with the selected tractors. The objective of the study was to identify appropriate optimization model and to examine the resource allocation procedure and evaluation of the farm machinery management practices of sugar estate using linear programming model. The model was designed so as to compare, maximize or minimize farm costs. An optimization machinery model was developed to aid decision-makers and farm machinery managers in determining the optimal power requirement, scheduling the agricultural operations and minimizing machinery total costs. The results showed reduction of ownership cost from 4.30E+6 to 4.10E+6 (2003 E.C), 4.35E+6 to 3.71E+6 (2004 E.C), 4.35E+6 to 3.68E+6 (2005 E.C), 4.45E+6 to 4.01E+6 (2006 E.C), 4.36E+6 to 4.14E+6 (2007 E.C), 4.35E+6 to 4.01E+6 (2008 E.C), and the improvement achieved as a reduction of 4.63%, 14.79%, 15.4%, 9.96%, 5.19%, 7.92%, respectively. Whereas; costs of operation reduced from 90%, 10.32%, 70.64%, 10.13%, 90%, 72.22%, 14.47%, and 89.06%, for the above mentioned production years. This was achieved using General Algebraic Modeling System program that generate optimal solution in terms of minimizing cost of operation, reducting tractor numbers and profit maximization. Since good performance and Evaluation of Farm Machinery Management analysis is one of the tools to enhance economic growth, the outcome of this paper is recommended to apply the optimization model as pre-requisite for improving machinery management during implementation of machinery scheduling.