Sustainable development of mixed farming systems in a newly reclaimed area in Egypt
A linear programming (LP) technique was adopted to determine the optimum combination of crops and livestock production on small mixed farms in a newly reclaimed area in Egypt. Three locations reflected the different types of producer; traditional farmers, early retirees, and university graduates. One LP model with two scenarios was proposed. The base run (real-life situation) utilized farm available production resources of crop and livestock activities. The first scenario (LP1) was proposed to meet farmerís basic food needs and satisfy animals' requirements under the constraint of availability of Egyptian Pounds LE 10,000 as cash resources. The second scenario was the same as LP1 structure but modifying the farm size in the three studied locations to 10 feddan. It could be recommended that 10 feddan as farm size plus about 6 animal units with no less than 10,000 LE as cash resources is a reasonable structure for the development of the small mixed farm system in newly reclaimed areas in Egypt.