A Dynamic Optimal Control Model of Crop Thinning

Guenter Schamel and Stefan Schubert

No 126565, 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: We develop a general optimal control model of crop thinning applicable to settings in agriculture, horticulture and viticulture. Using a simple optimal control model for the land owner’s profit maximization problem, relevant scenarios are discussed using phase diagram analysis: (1) when the initial crop quantity is sufficiently small, crop thinning is not optimal, (2) when the initial crop quantity is high, it is optimal to thin the crop from the beginning of the relevant planning horizon and to reduce it over time until the stock of the crop has arrived at its optimum. From thereon, crop quantity evolves solely according to natural growth and/or decay. Depending on the model's parameters, this “stopping time” is reached sooner or later.

Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; Production Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/126565/files/C ... Schamel-Schubert.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae12:126565

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.126565

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().