When Paul Esker looks at the weather forecast, he sees something that would have seemed impossible to farmers a generation ago: a map of uncertainty itself. "You'll see the forecast, and it's weather we aren't used to," said Esker, a professor of epidemiology and field crop pathology at Penn State. "Uncertainty has increasingly become a bigger part of farming. It's just the world we've been dealing with for the last several years."
That uncertainty played out in devastating fashion last year. An unusually mild winter followed by a wet spring made 2024 one of the worst in a decade for Pennsylvania soybean growers—not because of the soybeans, but because of slugs. The pests survived the warm winter to lay a second round of eggs, and twice as many slugs hatched compared to the year before. They ate so many seedlings that some growers had to replant their fields three times.
Now, Esker and a team of Penn State researchers are fighting back with data. They developed the Open Crop Manager, a free web-based platform and mobile app that enables farmers, consultants, and extension educators to document crop conditions and make field observations with spatial and temporal precision. The data flows into machine learning and predictive modeling systems that calculate how diseases and pests could impact crop yields across multiple states.
"Our idea is to empower farmers by getting their data back in their hands," said Esker, one of the college's inaugural Land Grant Research Impact Fellows. "We are providing insights that can help farmers make more informed agricultural decisions—and that ultimately can improve outcomes."
Through a combination of scout visits and farmer-generated logs, the team has collected approximately 13,000 unique reports across 10 states over three years. These reports offer a comprehensive record of crop conditions over time—tracking weeds, pests, diseases, and even wildlife damage from deer and groundhogs. Farmers can see aggregated data from multiple regions, comparing their practices and conditions with others facing similar challenges.
The platform also helps farmers assess their return on investment for seed treatments, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides—decisions that affect their bottom line and, when optimized, can reduce unnecessary pesticide use. The models even overlay satellite imagery to identify patterns invisible to the human eye.
Troy Ott, Peter and Ann Tombros Dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, emphasized that this work sits at the heart of the university's land-grant mission. "Our researchers are developing technologies to help farmers increase yields, protect our natural resources, and stay resilient in a changing world," Ott said.
As climate change accelerates and pest pressures intensify, the Open Crop Manager represents a shift from reactive farming to proactive planning—one where farmers can see trouble coming and act before their fields suffer. It's not about eliminating uncertainty, but learning to navigate it.