Organic farming enhances food quality and public health, and contributes to a more sustainable environment. Although certified organic farmland grew from 11 to 72.3 million hectares between 1999 and 2019, it constituted only 1.5 percent of the world’s agricultural farmland in 2019. The main impediment to the conversion from conventional to organic farming is the financial difficulties that farmers experience during the transition period in terms of decrease in yield and increase in farming costs owing to transitional practices. Furthermore, uncertainty in crop price and yield may aggravate the adverse effects of transitional practices. This article presents a multi-period optimization model for the allocation of farmland among crops and agricultural practices which allows farmers to plan a transition to organic farming while incurring a bounded shortfall of income. We calibrate our model to represent a grower of corn and soybean in Iowa and, using a seemingly unrelated regression model, crops revenues are simulated and utilized in the numerical experiments. The results show that i) our optimized crop rotation pattern outperforms other policies in the agriculture industry, including monoculture and systematic crop rotation, and that ii) our gradual conversion plan mitigates the chance of profit shortfalls.

有机农业提高食品质量和公共健康，并有助于创造更可持续的环境。尽管1999年至2019年间，经过认证的有机农田面积从11万公顷增加到7230万公顷，但到2019年仅占世界农田面积的1.5%。从传统农业向有机农业转变的主要障碍是农民在转型过程中遇到的经济困难由于过渡做法导致产量下降和农业成本增加。此外，农作物价格和产量的不确定性可能会加剧过渡做法的不利影响。本文提出了一种在农作物和农业实践之间分配农田的多时期优化模型，使农民能够计划向有机农业的过渡，同时产生有限的收入短缺。我们校准我们的模型来代表爱荷华州的玉米和大豆种植者，并使用看似无关的回归模型，在数值实验中模拟和利用农作物收入。结果表明，i）我们优化的轮作模式优于农业行业的其他政策，包括单一栽培和系统轮作，并且 ii）我们的逐步转换计划减轻了利润短缺的可能性。农作物收入在数值实验中被模拟和利用。结果表明，i）我们优化的轮作模式优于农业行业的其他政策，包括单一栽培和系统轮作，并且 ii）我们的逐步转换计划减轻了利润短缺的可能性。农作物收入在数值实验中被模拟和利用。结果表明，i）我们优化的轮作模式优于农业行业的其他政策，包括单一栽培和系统轮作，并且 ii）我们的逐步转换计划减轻了利润短缺的可能性。