A General Regional Agricultural Model (GRAM) Applied to a Region in Poland

Albegov, M., Kacprzyk, J.W., Orchard-Hays, W., Owsinski, J.W., & Straszak, A. (1982). A General Regional Agricultural Model (GRAM) Applied to a Region in Poland. IIASA Research Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: RR-82-026

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Abstract

The General Regional Agricultural Model (GRAM) described in this report is the product of a case study of regional development in the Upper Notec region of Poland carried out collaboratively by IIASA and the Systems Research Institute in Warsaw, Poland. The purpose of this work was twofold: to assist Polish authorities in planning the development of agriculture in the region, and to create a universal methodology in the form of a model applicable to similar problems and settings in other countries. Thus, the methodological characteristics presented in this report are based on testing and implementing the model in the concrete situation of the Upper Notec region of Poland.

GRAM was developed using the so-called "bottom-up" approach, which consists of orienting the model toward technological interdependencies at the level of the agricultural areas in the region, and including a set of variables and parameters that enable this "bottom" model to be linked with those for other aspects of the regional economy.

The model deals with the following elements: a set of crops, a number of rotation groups; types of agricultural animals, types of livestock products, and feed components in forage; three types of market and three types of land ownership; different crop growing and livestock breeding technologies; and different soil qualities and types of fertilizers according to the contents of the elements. The model incorporates space and can give solutions for a number of regions. Technically GRAM is a large linear programming model with static relations.

The purpose of the model is to derive a detailed specification for a production structure combined with a direct utilization of its products that is optimal for a predefined objective. The model can also be used to indicate essential bottlenecks, resource distribution inconsistencies, and so on. It allows the formulations of multi-objective optimization problems to consider conflicts between different groups of producers. It is solved under constraints in labor, machinery, fertilizers and water availability at annual and two peak levels.

Two types of objective functions are used: monetary (linked with cost-benefit analysis) and physical. Among specific objective for which the model has been solved there are: total net return or net production value from agricultural activities within the region; balance of regional agricultural production in monetary terms; regional agricultural production in terms of nutrition units; regional trade balances in livestock products in monetary terms and nutrition units; and export production in monetary terms. In cooperation with other elements of the regional model system, two types of information are exchanged: dual prices and volume of output.

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