Determining Optimum Fertilizer Combinations Through Goal Programming with Penalty Functions: An Application to Sugar Beet production in Spain

A goal programming model was used to analyse optimum fertilizer combinations. Under this approach, the fertilizer requirements, instead of being fixed values as in traditional linear programming, are considered targets which may or may not be achieved. A penalty system coupled to the goal programming model makes the specified lower and upper levels of nutrients more flexible and realistic. A simple example is used to expound the model, and then applied to real data to give optimum combinations of fertilizers for sugar beet in Western Andalusia (Spain).