Small-Producer Selection and Order Allocation in the Agri-Food Supply Chain

Producer diversification and order allocation are problems in the operational research field that require decision-making skills from the side retailers so that they can choose from who and when to place orders to meet their demand. These tasks are especially challenging in the agricultural field since orders need to be placed months in advance for some products to take into account the time required for planting and farming the produce. This work presents an exploratory model that tackles the challenge of farmer selection and order allocation. We develop a linear program that minimizes the demand cost while considering quantity-dependent pricing and a variety of constraints that agricultural retailers face.