by Ben Nuelle
I?ve not met a single farmer who doesn?t care about the weather. The Iowa Soybean Association conducted research to find out how weather relates to profitability. Peter Kyverga is Director of Analytics at the Iowa Soybean Association.
?We have used historical spatial yield data supplied by farmers. Then we used the crop budget for each field and used the commercial tool and estimated field profitability. It is the return on investment to the cost in crop production. We generated a bunch of maps with profitability values and then return on investment a standard deviation for profitability across almost 500 fields across central and north eastern Iowa,? Kyverga says.
Kyverga says they focused on the Des Moines Lobe which has a gently rolling landscape with abundant moraines, shallow wetland basins, and a few relatively deep natural lakes.
?For the Des Moines Lobe we found the area with potholes consistently performed differently than areas without potholes. We also found significant effects of early season rainfall in May and June for within-field profitability in central Iowa and northeastern Iowa,? Kyverga says.
He adds it all goes back to the glaciers.
?The glacier from Canada brought lime and create a specific closed drainage area called potholes which is remnants of this glacier and this area is relatively productive with high organic matter but relatively poor in drainage,? Kyverga says.
