Abstract: Chinese vegetable production cooperatives supply their members, mostly smallholder farmers, with a rotation schedule for the year.  Since vegetable prices are not stable throughout the year, designing a rotation schedule that maximizes expected profits, distributes farmers’ profits more equitably, maintains the diversity of produce in the market, and reduces the risk of pests and diseases, requires adaptive, price-contingent rotation schedules (here, called “self-adaptive adjustment”).  This study uses an agent-based simulation (ABS) to design self-adaptive rotation schedules that deliver these aims.  The self-adaptive adjustment strategy was more profitable for farmers when faced with price volatility, and more equitable as well.  This work provides a decision-support tool for managers of Chinese vegetable production cooperatives to provide farmers with more profitable and equitable rotation schedules.   

Key words: operation research in agriculture ,  self-adaptive algorithm ,  cooperatives , market fluctuation