[rules-users] Introduction to my project

Hello, I would appreciate the opportunity to get your feedback. The question I have is "Is a Rule Engine the best solution to my problem or do i have to write a custom algorithm?" What follows is a one paragraph background and then the actual problem. I live in a farm 90km north of Melbourne. My farm is my PhD project, which i call the Suburban Micro Farm. The idea is to grow food in the farm and have a commercial kitchen (in the farm) to prepare take away meals which will be sold in downtown Melbourne. I am writing a J2EE compliant web based application to control the operation of the farm/ delivery service. THe farm will be certified organic and is not connected to the grid. All of my intellectual property is opens source under the idea of Open Source Franchising. The problem at hand is as follow. In my vegetable garden, I have planting beds of different sizes. i will plant seedlings in those beds. i have all the data for how long should the seeds be in the seedling trays before transplanting to beds. I have the data for how far apart should be placed and how long should they be in the ground. I also have data as which ones should be placed next to which others and which should not be planted together. How should the seedlings be placed in the beds assuming that we also need to take into account a rotation of beds across seasons? The rotation will be created using rules as "if bed 1 had tomatoes then next season plant beans". This is a typical problem I need to solve. Like the problem described above, I have many more in different parts of the supply chain. Should I use a rules engine or should i write custom algorithms? Thanks