From the Farm to Purdue: What Josh Strine Wants to Understand About Farm Decisions

How do farmers make decisions—and what can the growing amount of data generated on farms tell us about those decisions? If you've followed Purdue's Crop Basis Tool or the Center's monthly basis updates, you've probably already heard from Josh Strine. After completing his PhD at Purdue, Josh is staying with the Center for Commercial Agriculture as a postdoc, where he'll continue working on extension tools and research involving farm markets, technology and agricultural finance. In this episode, Josh talks about his path from growing up on a corn and soybean farm in central Ohio to agricultural economics and Purdue. He also explains what he hopes to explore next—including a question that connects his experience on the farm with his research interests: why do farmers make the decisions they make, and what can we learn by combining agronomic information, farm-level data and economics? Josh, Chad and Todd also discuss precision-ag data, agricultural technology, farm lending, extension and what it means to move from a PhD student into a research role. And, of course, there's a little time for Todd and Chad to get Josh off track. Subscribe to the Purdue Commercial AgCast for monthly conversations about the decisions, markets and issues shaping commercial agriculture.