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Iowa U. - Iowa State Stat. Departments: Failing Iowa Farmers?
According to an article in the May 4th issue of The New York Times, Iowa farmers are bypassing the theoretically-inclined statistics departments at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University to obtain real-time agricultural data themselves, and are using off-the-shelf data capture and data analysis hardware and software to dramatically increase crop yields.
Insofar as these farmer/entrepreneur "statisticians" are concerned, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa statistics departments may as well be on the moon for all the good the stat. departments do for them. Computers have infiltrated every conceivable element of agriculture, influencing what farmers grow, how they grow it, and how they market agricultural products.
Traditionally, University of Iowa and Iowa State statisticians were in the forefront of crop-yield research. Recently, University of Iowa and Iowa State statisticians have been in the forefront of publishing theoretical papers having little, or nothing, to do with crop yields or marketing agricultural products.
According to the Times article, in the increasingly global agricultural market American farmers will come to rely heavily on technology and information systems to compete with nations that have cheaper land and labor. In the absence of excellent statistical advice from the University of Iowa and Iowa State, Iowa farmers must rely on the best crop planning, crop estimate, and crop marketing data and software obtainable from private sources. The Times article was written by Barnaby Feder and appears on page D1.