aspg-28-4512-1792155041 20261016125041 American Scientific Publishing Group admin@americaspg.com American Scientific Publishing Group Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Metaheuristics JAIM 2833-5597 2026 11 2 Toufik Mzili Faculty of Sciences, Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, Morocco Accurate forecasting of agricultural production is essential for managing food supply chains, guiding policy decisions, and building resilience against climate variability. However, modeling long-range, country-level crop production remains challenging due to temporal complexity, nonlinear dependencies, and the need for highly generalizable prediction systems. This study addresses these challenges by developing a hybrid forecasting framework that combines deep learning architectures with metaheuristic hyperparameter optimization. A global dataset spanning tomato and potato production from 1961 to 2021 was used to evaluate multiple forecasting models, including Informer, N-BEATS, LogTrans, N-HITS, EALSTM, TST, and LSTM. The Informer model achieved the best baseline performance (RMSE = 0.0799; NSE = 0.9070) and was selected for optimization. A comparative analysis was conducted using several metaheuristic algorithms, with particular focus on the Football Optimization Algorithm (FbOA), a novel strategy inspired by cooperative team dynamics. FbOA delivered the highest gains across all evaluated metrics, reducing RMSE to 0.00109, MSE to 1.19×10−6, and increasing NSE to 0.9260, R2 to 0.9600, and the correlation coefficient r to 0.9550. These results confirmed that metaheuristic tuning substantially enhances the forecasting capability of deep models, particularly when guided by domain-inspired search logic. The proposed framework demonstrates strong potential for integration into real-time, AI-driven agricultural decision support systems, offering scalable solutions for food security planning, climate-smart agriculture, and long-term sustainability forecasting. 2026 94 114 4512 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 10.54216/JAIM.110207 https://www.americaspg.com/journal/28/article/4512 https://www.americaspg.com/storage/articles/manuscripts/01M2ZNZVVWA8GN9T327ZKG4RRG.pdf