An Inventory Model for Ameliorating and Deteriorating Fresh Agricultural Items with Ripeness and Price Dependent Demand

In reality, the quantity or value or utility of some items increase with time and these items can be termed as ameliorating items. In this paper, an effort has been made to solve the harvest and sale decision problem of fresh agricultural items by incorporating two opposite physical characteristics, namely amelioration of field items and deterioration of stored items into inventory model. We develop profit models of the farmer with ripeness and price dependent demand over a finite planning horizon for two situations when the fresh agricultural items are harvested at growing-finishing point and at critical ripeness point respectively. Numerical examples indicate that the farmer´s profit is higher when fresh agricultural items being harvested at critical ripeness point, and the farmer´s profit with effort provided is less than that without effort provided for assumption of the same retail prices and wholesale prices. Hence fresh agricultural items should be harvested at critical ripeness point, and delivered from field to marketplace directly from a managerial point of view.