SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS DECEMBER, 1977 VERIFICATION OF LINEAR PROGRAMMING SOLUTIONS, WITH EMPHASIS ON SUPPLY IMPLICATIONS*

developed for a wide range of normative purposes in agricultural production economics. Despite their The static LP model used here was based on the widespread application, a pervading concern among assumption of a long run adjustment period (i.e., no users is reliability- how well does a particular model short run constraints on resources such as labor or actually describe and/or predict real world phe- operating capital), and was developed to evaluate the nomena when it is so designed. interaction in resource demand among 15 major Much attention has been devoted in recent years groups of vegetables and field crops in California. The to methods for making programming models produce state was divided into 95 production areas based on results more in line with those actually observed, similarities in soil, climate and water resources. These efforts have included development of more Acreage suitable and potentially available for crop detail in production activities and restrictions, in- production in each area during the period 1961-65 corporation of flexibility constraints into recursive was inventoried. The 15 commodity groups utilized programming systems [12], specification of more 79 percent of actual total crop acreage during that realistic behavioral properties [1], and development period. Acreage in excluded high-value crops (orchard of guidelines for reducing aggregation error [11]. crops and minor vegetables) and in non-agricultura