Development of a regional planning model: Consideration of demand, supply and risk factors

Development of regional planning models could aid planners and policy makers to establish more efficient agricultural policy measures in both the developed and less developed sectors of Southern Africa. This article explains the incorporation of negative‐sloping demand functions for crops, positive‐sloping supply functions for labour and variance‐covariance risk matrices in a linear programming model. These factors allow for greater flexibility and realism than the price‐taker assumption often used in linear programming.

Notes

Senior Lecturer, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. The author thanks Mr M C Lyne and an anonymous reviewer for useful comments.