Cárnico-ICSPEA2 – A metaheuristic co-evolutionary navigator for a complex co-evolutionary farming system

This paper introduces Cárnico-ICSPEA2, a metaheuristic co-evolutionary navigator designed by its end-user as an aid for the analysis and multi-objective optimisation of a beef cattle enterprise running on temperate pastures and fodder crops in Chalco, Mexico State, in the central plateau of Mexico. By combining simulation routines and a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm with a deterministic and stochastic framework, the software imitates the evolutionary behaviour of the system of interest, helping the farm manager to ‘navigate’ through his system's dynamic phase space. The ultimate goal was to enhance the manager's decision-making process and co-evolutionary skills, through an increased understanding of his system and the discovery of new, improved heuristics.