Agriculture Reference
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The selection of the relevant objectives and the estimation of the related weights,
as alternative of MAUT, present a methodology proposed by Sumpsi et al. ( 1996 ),
Amador et al. ( 1998 ), and Berbel and Rodr ´ guez-Oca˜a( 1998 ), which allows the
assessment of the farmers' utility function. The proposed method does not rely on
interaction with the decision maker, but is aware of the actual behavior demons-
trated by the farmers, meaning a utility function consistent with the preferences
revealed by the farmers themselves will be obtained.
The utility models have wide applications in agriculture, as confirmed in the
works of Rehman and Romero ( 1987 ), G´mez-Lim´n and Berbel ( 1995 ), Sumpsi
et al. ( 1996 ), and G´mez-Lim´n and Berbel ( 2000 ). The use of the weighted-goals
program in this sector to estimate the utility function was developed in the last for
multiple authors.
Preferences of the decision centers (Heilman et al. 1997 ; Carvalho 2006 )orof
the local population (Tiwari et al. 1999 ) are usually incorporated in Multi-Criteria
decision models. However, other studies use MAUT to estimate a surrogate utility
function for farmers' decision process (Amador et al. 1998 ;G´mez-Lim´n and
Berbel 2000 ; Riesgo and Gom´z-Lim´n 2006 ; Bartolini et al. 2007 ), which will be
outlined later to face the parallelism with the present work.
Amador et al. ( 1998 ) proposes a methodological approach for electing farmers'
utility functions (using three functions: separable and additive utility function,
Tchebycheff utility function, and augmented Tchebycheff utility function), for
observing the actual behavior of farmers. They use this methodology assuming
the conflictive objectives (working capital, risk, and profit) of Spanish farmers.
Their results showed that multiple objectives are taken in account by farmers'
decision, but the traditional objective, profit maximization, is not always the most
important in their decisions. This result is very important to understand the decision
making process in agriculture and the farmers' behavior.
G ´ mez-Lim ´ n and Berbel ( 2000 ) used a weighted goal programming to estimate
a surrogate utility function for farmers' decision process. This model allows them to
estimate the value of water demand in irrigated crop production and the economic,
social, and environmental impact, using as farmers' objectives profit maximization
and risk and labor input minimization. Their results show that the water price is not
the only tool to reduce the water consumption but also the economic and social
impact, which means a negative effect in agricultural income and employment.
Silva ( 2001 ) estimated a surrogate utility analysis using the weighted goal
programming for Azorean dairy farms. The first step found three types of grazing
system, a second step estimates a payoff matrix with the most relevant objectives,
and finally, a utility function that reveals the dairy farm objectives for each system
grazing was estimated. The results showed that only the less intensive system
grazing (low than 1.4 animals per ha) weighted income. The other system grazing
(1.4-2.4 and superior to 2.4 animals per ha) has little significance in the objectives
of priorities for Azorean dairy farms. It can be explained by the amount of subsidies
in total income (around 20 %).
A methodological approach to simulate policy scenarios by using multi-criteria
mathematical programming models for simulating the behavior of farmers, in
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