Modelling optimal crop sequences using network flows

In recent years there has been an increased focus on sustainable farming systems. This has led to an increase in the use of farm models built to assess the environmental impact from farming. In whole-farm models including crop production it is important to consider the rotation of crops, since this has a major impact on the consequences of the crop production. The problem considered in this paper is that of finding an optimal crop rotation for a given selection of crops on a given piece of land. It is shown that techniques from network modelling can be used to model this problem, which has the advantage that special algorithms for solving network problems can be developed arid applied to solve the crop rotation problem. This can save computation time and make it tractable to implement crop rotation in whole-farm models. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.