Introduction

• Linear programming is a mathematical process. of selecting the combination of income producing farm activities that. will produce the highest net profit from a given set of resources. Simply stated, it is a comparison of income opportunities.
• It is used in making decisions about establishment of new industries and in deciding upon different methods of production, distribution and marketing and other policy decisions.
• The technique is being progressively utilized in finding solutions to various farm management problems and in planning the farm enterprise mix with a view of maximizing the given objective functions.

Assumptions

a) A well-defined objective function: Its major objective is helping rational decision maker or farmer.

b) Presence of Constraints in the activities: Due to limited resources, some constraints exist in the activities which needs managerial decisions. Thus, availability of resources such as production capacity, manpower, time, money, space should be limited.

c) Linearity: It describes the relationship among the two or more variables which are directly proportional.

d) Divisibility: It means resources can be used in fraction similarly the output can also be produced in fraction.

e) Additivity: It means the total product is the sum of each activity.

f) Finiteness: It means there is always a limit to the activities and resources.

g) Non-negativity: It means resources and activity can’t take negative values.

h) Single Value Expectations: Single value expectations mean that the resource availability and input-output coefficients as well as prices are known with certainty.