My research partner, Maegan, and I!
Author: Caroline Spence | Major: Finance
Hello, my name is Caroline Spence, and I am a senior finance major in the Sam M. Walton College of Business! This summer, I researched through the Special Projects in Eswatini study abroad program with the help of my mentors, Dr. Farmer of the economics department and Dr. Nalley of the agricultural economics department. After graduating this coming May, I plan to continue my education by earning my Masters of Agricultural Economics at the U of A!
I was connected to Dr. Farmer through my academic advisor, Jason Adams, and my economics professor, Dr. Braxton Gately. Dr. Farmer created the Special Projects in Eswatini program several years ago to expose students to the field of developmental economics in foreign countries. Although I am a finance major, I was interested in expanding my knowledge of global issues and applying my finance skillset to hopefully help solve some too! My research this year was centered around the sugarcane farming sector in Eswatini, a small developing country next to South Africa. Eswatini is largely dependent on sugarcane for their economic viability, and they have recently faced drought-induced yield issues accompanied by a lack of formal training on farming best practices. For my research specifically, I worked alongside the Eswatini Cane Growers Association to perform statistical analyses on their farm data and to help them identify potential areas of concern among their farmers. Originally, my research was supposed to be conducted in Eswatini, and I had intended to travel to individual farms and talk to the farmers firsthand. However, due to the Covid situation, my research was moved to a virtual format. While this initially posed a great challenge, my research partner, Maegan, and I adapted to the new circumstances and changed the scope of our project. Instead of talking directly to farmers, I was given the Association’s farm data from the past five years which detailed yields, market prices, and farm costs among other variables. With this data, I was tasked with determining the differences in farm profitability between the three sugarcane growing regions – Ubombo, Simunye, and Mhlume. Through a combination of accounting principles and statistical simulations, I determined that the two northern regions had a statistically significant difference in profitability compared to the southern region. In addition to my profitability analysis, I analyzed the profitability of farms based on gender. Although Eswatini is a highly patriarchal society, I determined that women-led farms were statistically more profitable than male-led farms. After presenting these findings to the Association, my colleagues were very interested in the gender disparity, and they wanted a deeper dive into possible explanations. As a result, the second half of my research term consisted of making a detailed survey to be sent out to every sugarcane farmer in Eswatini! Although I won’t get to implement the survey myself, the Association will be surveying their farmers early next year and I am very excited to see the results of my work!
My research this summer has been a very fruitful experience, but it couldn’t have been done without the help of my mentor, Dr. Nalley. He spent countless hours on Zoom with my research partner and me teaching us the in and outs of statistical analysis and several new advanced software programs. My research experience was so transformative, that I have decided to switch my graduate degree to Dr. Nalley’s program – agricultural economics! I am very excited to continue researching with him next year and to continue to work firsthand on critical world issues!