An Iterative Three-Stage Neighborhood Search for Solving Precedence Constrained Agricultural Land Investment Problem

The use of neighborhood search techniques to address a practical issue faced by agricultural investors is examined in this study. The problem is named as agricultural land investment problem with precedence constraints and it has an essential impact on agriculture issues. The tackled problem can be viewed as a variant of the well-known classical 0-1 knapsack problem where precedence constraints are imposed on pairs of items. Precedence constraints take into account a precedence relation between items. This paper first simulates the considered problem as precedence constraints knapsack problem and presents a mathematical representation model. Then, an iterative three-stage neighborhood search method is proposed for optimizing the problem. The proposed method consists of three stages. First stage applies a greedy procedure in order to construct a feasible solution. Second stage applies local search procedures in order to enhance the quality of the solutions at hand. Third and last, in order to broaden the search space, a random neighborhood destruction approach is introduced. Finally, the effectiveness of the suggested approach is assessed and contrasted with the outcomes obtained by greedy and local search techniques. The presented method is competitive and efficient since it produces excellent solutions in a reasonable amount of time.