Maximizing profit in the poultry farming sector: An application of the robust linear programming technique

Managing the limited resources of money, time and space poses a real problem in the livestock business in general and the poultry sector in particular. The stochastic linear programming with recourse will permit the formulation of a mathematical model that could easily be solved in order to attain the objective of maximizing profit but this will be hindered by the presence of some parameters like demand and supply which have no predetermined probability distributions. In an attempt to address the problem of unavailable probability distribution functions, this research is aimed at proposing a robust linear programming model which can handle problems and others in similar circumstances with the need of probability distributions.The robust model thus constructed is based on a modification of the stochastic model by Soyster. An application of this model on a real life data produced results showing an increase in profit made by a local poultry farmer from 241,485 FCFA to 362,580FCFA representing an increase in profit of more than 50% in over that obtained when using the ordinary Linear Programming Technique. The belief therefore is that, if models like this are implemented, not only would the livelihood of the poultry farmers be improved, but it will go a long way to better the economy and satisfy the ever increasing need of poultry products by the communities.