TOOLS FOR THE TRADE
Jack Boyer, Reinbeck, was instrumental in the development of the Cover Crop Simulator.
ISA takes lead developing online decision-making tools
BY KRISS NELSON
S
ince 2005, the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) has worked with farmers to conduct replicated strip trials on various commercial products and traditional and emerging farm management practices. By 2011, data from thousands of trials had been accumulated. ISA turned the data into a free online database of anonymous trial results. As data continued to accumulate, ISA recognized the need to further maximize use of the data. Thus, the analytics team at ISA led by Peter Kyveryga, senior research scientist and director of analytics, was formed in 2013. “I saw more value to use the data to predict the probability that would determine the likelihood of a yield response with current crop market prices
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and the cost to implement a treatment if it would fully pay for itself or produce a profit,” Kyveryga says. In 2018, together with Iowa State University researchers, the team launched its flagship interactive online tool: ISOFAST (Interactive Summaries of On-Farm Strip Trials). Since then, four more interactive tools have been added. They are on the ISA website under the “Research” tab.
Nothing compares The ISA tools are unique as they leverage an interactive online platform designed for information visualization and statistical and economic summarization to help farmers make more informed decisions.
They also aid in the communication of overlapping areas, including agronomy, conservation, economics and technology while addressing the complex nature of ag decisions, volatility in prices, input cost, crop productivity, weather and sustainability. Recently, Carroll County ISA farmermembers Ryan and Tarin Tiefenthaler sat down with ISA Conservation Aagronomist Joe Wuebker for a tutorial on using the interactive tools. “The access to all this information in one place is awesome,” says Tarin. They are now looking forward to using
