AgEcon Graduate Students Place First in International Agribusiness Competition
Three agricultural economics Ph.D. students competed at the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association World Conference and took home first place in the Student Case Competition.
K-State students Abena Damuah, Calder McCollum and Margaret Lippsmeyer travelled to Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, to attend the IFAMA conference, compete and visit surrounding agricultural businesses.
The Student Case Competition, in which the team of Damuah, McCollum and Lippsmeyer took home first place, focused on problems in the agribusiness industry. The team was allotted four hours to review the given materials, discuss the main issues, provide solutions to mitigate the problems and analyze other industry statistics online to support their suggested solutions. After completing the analysis, the team created a slideshow presentation to showcase their solutions to the judges.
The problem that Damuah, McCollum and Lippsmeyer faced came from Atvos, a Brazilian company that produces energy from sugarcane, and SLC Agrícola, a large operation that grows cotton, soybeans, sugarcane and more. Issues that both companies had were presented to the students so that they could apply principles and ideas from their agribusiness courses.
“You have four hours to work on it, and then you present your solution and findings to a panel of judges,” Lippsmeyer said. “The judges included a few people from academia, but also stakeholders and CEOs from the companies.”
The K-State team started preparing before they arrived in Brazil.
“My team worked on and off throughout the summer, for about a month, doing practice presentations,” Lippsmeyer said. “Once we get into that room, we only have four hours, so we wanted to have all of the formatting on our slides basically done.”
The conference provided more than just on-site competitions. The K-State team also had the opportunity to attend academic presentations by industry professionals, participate in an agribusiness symposium and learn about production practices and other topics that are impacting global farm management.
Outside of the IFAMA conference, K-State set up farm tours for the group to attend around Brazil, with the main tour being a sugar cane production facility. The team got to see the production of granulated sugar, from the stocks coming out of the field to the sugar cane juice being condensed into sugar.
“They walked us through the whole processing facility, and at the end, the owner brought out some sugar and let everyone try it,” Lippsmeyer said. “That was super cool.”