A data-driven method for helping farmers decide what seed varieties to plant has landed a University of Iowa team of analytics experts in the finals of an international agricultural-management competition.

The team—led by Sam Burer, a professor of management sciences in the Tippie College of Business who researches business analytics—was tasked to use soil-property data, seed-variety data, and weather data to develop a model to predict what varieties farmers should plant to maximize yield. The hypothetical farm where the teams were asked to plant is in central Iowa, north of Des Moines.

Burer’s team, which also includes UI doctoral student Bhupesh Shetty and undergraduate business analytics and information systems (BAIS) major Ling Tong, is one of six invited to the finals April 11 in Orlando, Florida. The three of them had to analyze an enormous number of data points using analytics techniques in order to develop a unique model.

“This included carefully cleaning and organizing the yield-level data, predicting the probability of various weather patterns, and preparing a computer model to integrate everything and optimize the farmer's choice,” Burer says.

The team found that the biggest question mark was weather; even though they had hundreds of meteorological data points collected from across the Midwest and going back eight years, there’s still a certain amount of guesswork when it comes to long-term weather forecasting.

“That’s important because if a farmer plants too much of a variety that thrives in a certain kind of weather and then the weather changes, they’ll lose money,” he says.

To mitigate that unknown, Burer’s team borrowed an idea from finance: the theory of portfolio management and risk tolerance. Different investors build portfolios of equities and other investments based on how well they tolerate risk—those who are more tolerant put more investments like higher-risk growth stocks in their portfolio while buying fewer low-risk investments, such as municipal bonds. More risk-averse investors, meanwhile, buy more bonds and keep stocks to a minimum.

Transferring this theory from Wall Street to the farm, the researchers developed a series of portfolios with seed varieties instead of investments, with each portfolio aimed at farmers of different risk tolerances.

“If a farmer is more risk averse, they can plant more of one type of seed variety and less of another, while a farmer with more tolerance might reverse that,” Burer says.

The Syngenta Crop Challenge is sponsored by INFORMS, a professional society for practitioners of information-systems management, and Syngenta, an agricultural biotechnology firm.

The University of Iowa offers several academic programs for students who want to learn about business analytics and how data analysis can help a business grow, including an undergraduate major, a specialized track in the full-time MBA program, and a new certificate and master’s program offered part-time at its classroom facilities in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Davenport/Quad Cities.

The University of Iowa offers several academic programs for students who want to learn about business analytics and how data analysis can help a business grow, including an undergraduate major, a specialized track in the full-time MBA program, and a new certificate and master’s program offered part-time at its classroom facilities in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Davenport/Quad Cities.