A farmer in Minnesota is practicing integrated crop production in his 1,000-acre farm. Each year, he grows Soft wheat (SW), CPS wheat (CP), Spring wheat (SpW), Feed barley (FB), Malt barley (MB), Argentine canola (AC), Dry beans (DB), Sugar beet (SB) and Lentil (LE). He devotes at least 10 acres to each crop, and uses LP for maximizing gross margin (often written as GM; its another word for revenue) given the constraints he faces. He has 4,000 hours of available labor, 500 hours of machine time, 35,000 pounds of N fertilizer, 15,000 pounds of P fertilizer, 18,000 pounds of K fertilizer and $125,000 of operating capital. Per acre GM and input requirement to formulate an LP problem are given below:

1. Suppose that the farmer has the option to rent additional land at a cost of $25/acre. Should he be renting land? (formulate the problem adding rented land as an additional decision variable and solve the problem to find the answer)

2. If the rental rate is $150/acre, should he still be renting? Why or why not?

Items SW CP SpW FB MBAC DB SB LE GM($/ac) 189 175 169 122 155 210 147 205 132 3 3 3 3 2.5 2.5 3.5 3 4 2 Labor (h/ac) Machine (h/ac) 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.9 0.3 1.1 0.3 N Fertilizer (lb/ac) 40 35 35 35 40 65 10 50 0 P Fertilizer (lb/ac) 10 10 10 210 12 15 30 32 27 K Fertilizer (lb/ac) 15 15 15 10 15 20 12 60 10 Op. Captial (S/ac) 90 85 85 70 75 125 75 120 65