Abstract

The government of Paraguay designed a National Development Plan 2030 with strategies and goals to achieve poverty reduction, social development, and inclusive economic growth. Despite the efforts above, family farmers are affected by food insecurity and are losing dominance partly due to their operations’ lack of sustainability and profitability. Furthermore, excessive self-consumption of their crops leads to inadequate diets with low-cost, high-energy, and nutrient-poor foods. In the case study analyzed for the Department of Caazapá of Paraguay, the farms served by the ALATs allocate 90% of their land to traditional crops: sesame, cassava, corn, and beans. In addition, they self-consume around 65% of their production. Therefore, they produce to subsist. In this work, we propose a deterministic mixed integer linear model considering the primary agricultural operations and the requirements to produce multiple crops in multiple periods, emphasizing demand satisfaction and cooperation among small farmers. The O seeks to maximize the farmer’s profit and the food security of the farm, considering, on the one hand, the operating costs and, on the other hand, income from product sales, self-consumption of crops, and the exchange of products between farmers. To include the dimensions of sustainability, this research addresses, among other aspects, the increase in the levels of profitability and food security (FS) of farmers in a developing country, proposing to carry out their operations from the perspective of an Agricultural Supply Chain (ASC) and generating, in the case study, alternative production planning to the plans suggested by the Local Technical Assistance Agencies (ALATs). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.