Development of Seeding and Planting Scheduling Algorithms for Contract Farming of Organic Vegetable with Multi Seeding and Planting Center

Abstract

Organic vegetables are perishable products with special characteristics because its shelf life is influenced by product characteristics, environmental conditions and production time. Customer only buys fresh organic vegetables because its price is more expensive than the non-organic ones. The scheduling of seeding and planting process becomes the most important thing for organic vegetables producer. They must ensure the right time and good condition in organic vegetables consumer delivery. An organic vegetable products company is implementing a contract farming system. They have some Planting and Seeding Centers (PSCs) across several cities. PSC is an organization which cooperate with farmers in contract farming. The functions of PSC are to seed, distributing the seeding result to farmers, packing vegetables form farmers and shipping vegetables to customers. Farmers will plant the seeds received from PSC based on a schedule given by PSC. This research will develop an algorithm of seeding and planting scheduling by PSC and farmers. There are several types of vegetables: vegetables with seeding, vegetables without seeding, planted inside green house, and planted in an open field. PSC and farmers are determined by the nearest distance to customers, the availability of green houses and open fields. The purpose of this algorithm is to optimize PSC seeding and planting scheduling, so we can minimize production costs (seeding, planting, packing and distribution costs) and maximize profits.