Multi Criterion Decision Making in Agricultural Planning in Qalqilya District, Palestine

The best compromise agricultural plan selection is examined in the multi objective context. The study deals with three conflicting objectives: net benefit, agricultural production and labor employment. Four-stage procedure is adopted combining multi objective optimization, cluster analysis, and multi criterion decision making (MCDM) method. Pareto optimal curves are used to evaluate the marginal price of land area and the marginal price of labor day. The benefit cost theory is applied to rank the non-dominant alternatives. Two MCDM methods, namely Weighted Goal Programming method (WGP) and Step method (STEM), are employed in the evaluation of these alternatives. The above methodology is applied to a case study of Qalqilya District, West Bank, Palestine. Overall, Palestinian agriculture is constrained by available land and water, as well as access to markets. The results show that Pareto optimal is a powerful tool to determine the marginal price of non-monetary commodities. It is also found that the annual net benefit, agricultural production and labor employment on average for the cultivated area are $ 941423, 3288 tones, and 14671 days, respectively, in the best compromise plan