Abstract:
One of the constraints associated with the general farming community of Sri Lanka is
inability of farmers in adapting to the volatile market situations. Market oriented Agricultural
Advisory Services (MOAAS) are knowledge based prediction systems that is successfully used in
many countries as effective advisory services in strengthening the peasant farmer to identify and
cater the market need, considering current market pattern with multiple approaches, focusing the
development of overall production chain through securing new markets. This preliminary study
intends to develop an operational tool using simple linear mathematical programming to predict
commercial information to use it as supportive equipment for MOAAS to assess the use and
suitability of MOAAS under practical farming operations based on a randomly selected small
groups of small scale farmers from four areas of Sri Lanka. MOAAS was used to find the best crop animal combination with the lower and upper limits, reduced cost, allowable increase and decrease,
practical alternative agricultural options. Farming activities were intensively studies to compare
the commercial aspects of the venture before and after the programme was implemented and to
evaluate the progress. It was concluded that the MOAAS programme offered promising results in
cost reduction and increasing the average income per unit. The results show that the MOAAS
programme can be continued with improvements suggested, expecting positive outcomes.
