COORDINATION OF MULTILEVEL OPTIMIZATION AND BENEFIT ALLOCATION IN AGRICULTURAL INTEGRATION

This dissertation develops a methodology for: (A) The joint planning of activities by several cooperating but independent producers, where such cooperation can have synergistic results. (B) An equitable distribution of the benefits resulting from the activities executed according to the above plan.; The first objective is addressed using well established technologies of multilevel optimization and the second using concepts from Rawls' theory of distributive justice, Aumann-Shapley prices and methodologies of Billera and Heath and of Mirman and Tauman which rendered the above operational.; The Dissertation focuses on the wide range of potential applications in agriculture where cooperatives of various formats are common.; The validity, efficacy and robustness of the methodology developed is tested using hard data from the fish pond farming sectors of several Israeli farms.