Arkansan a wizard with farm forecasts
Posted on Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Good information often comes from unlikely sources.
Doris Shelton is a case in point.
The 59-year-old grandmother of four from Greene County placed second nationwide in “Farmetrics,” an innovative contest that collects and shares crop information from participants around the United States.
“[Farmetrics ] is another source of information for what’s going on out in the field,” said Bill Towles, who manages the Web-based program for Bunge Global Markets Inc., the White Plains, N. Y.-based export trading arm of agribusiness giant Bunge Limited. The program’s Web site address is www. farmetrics. com.
Farmetrics participants submit predictions for local planted acreage, yield and harvested acreage for such major crops as corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton, Towles said. The predictions, which can be submitted as often as once a week, are county-based.
“The feeling is that the more local it is, the more expert knowledge you have about what the crops are doing,” Towles said. “So we compile that from a national pool to come up with what we think the U. S. crop will be.” Shelton, who submitted soybean yield predictions for Greene County, earned 36, 891 points to finish first in Arkansas for 2006. The top contestant, an agricultural marketing consultant from Kansas, earned 37, 527 points, and the No. 10 winner, a woman from Iowa, earned 32, 167 points.
The points are redeemable for prizes at the Farmetrics online catalog, which includes everything from cordless drills and overalls to gift cards and travel.
Farmetrics, begun in 2006, is the first “prediction market” tailored for U. S. agribusiness, Towles said.
The concept is based on the Iowa Electronic Markets, he said.
The first Iowa Electronic Market was established in 1988 by the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business to predict the winner of the U. S. presidential election, said George McCrory, an editor for news services at the University of Iowa.
“Traders buy shares in the prospects of a candidate,” and several new markets predict such things as the incidence of flu, McCrory said.
The home page for Iowa Electronic Markets is: www. biz. uiowa. edu / iem.
Iowa Electronic Markets “proved to be highly accurate,” so Bunge designed Farmetrics along the same lines, Towles said. The Bunge program is free to participants, and bonus points are awarded to encourage regular participation. Only Farmetrics participants have access to the estimates of other participants.
Farmetrics is a continous program. “We’re now into planted acres for ’ 07,” Towles said.
Shelton said she has been submitting predictions “every week for about a year” just “for fun.” She claims no secret formula for her success and said she hasn’t decided how she will redeem her points.
Shelton, who lives near Rector, has worked at Delta Cotton Co-operative Inc. in Marmaduke since 1981. She grew up on a farm, married a farmer who grows corn, soybean, rice and cotton, and has a son who is a farm loan officer with a bank in Paragould.
“We have a good community of farmers here, and they’re all just like family,” she said.
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