By Katrina Hageman
Hyewon Lee is working to bridge the gap between pesticide applications and farmer behavior.
Lee, a doctoral student in economics, is the 2026 recipient of the Thamodaran Family Innovation in Agriculture Student Award. The award supports students tackling a grand challenge in agriculture.
“My initial interest was in environmental economics, and Iowa State helped me become more open to agriculture,” Lee said. “When looking into topics that were both environmental and agricultural, I found pest management very interesting. I started to question why farmers choose the practices they do and how it impacts the environment.”
Lee’s goal is to identify the factors that drive farmers’ decisions about pesticide use. She is developing a decision-making model that determines when farmers optimally apply pesticides and whether they acquire information through scouting. The model highlights that limited information acquisition can be a rational response to costs and expected benefits. It is intended to guide farmers toward more economically efficient application decisions.
“The grand challenge is that the optimal pesticide use is not being implemented fully in practice,” Lee said. “Integrated pest management emphasizes applying pesticides based on scouting and economic thresholds, but many farmers do not adopt scouting. This is partly because information acquisition is costly and its value depends on the state of pest pressure.”
Lee said she would like to use the award funding to conduct a farmer survey to gather data on scouting preferences, application practices and how farmers view pesticides.
She also plans to highlight the importance of technological innovation in improving decision-making. Remote sensing, satellite imagery, automated scouting and precision agriculture are tools that Lee believes will shift farmers' outlook on implementing integrated pest management practices.
“To make the best application decisions, farmers need accurate information about what is happening in their fields,” Lee said. “By utilizing this technology, farmers can gain a better idea of what practice is best for their fields and become more efficient.”
In July, Lee will present her research at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association annual meeting in Kansas City. The Thamodaran award funding will cover conference registration, travel, lodging and submission costs.
She is excited to showcase her findings at the AAEA conference and other disciplinary conferences to gain feedback on whether her findings are sound to other stakeholders.
David Hennessy, professor of economics, has supervised Lee’s work since summer 2024. He said Lee has grown significantly during that time as a researcher.
“Hyewon is interested in applied problems and curious about how decisions and policies are made,” Hennessy said. “She has taken many opportunities to grow as a scholar and has a consideration and engaging personality that would do credit to the award fund.”
Upon graduation, Lee will pursue a research career in agricultural economics. She said it’s an honor to have been selected for the Thamodaran award.
“Doing research in the same field as Dr. Thamodaran is something I appreciate and take great pride in,” she said.
The Thamodaran Family Innovation in Agriculture Student Award is made possible by the generosity of Dhamu Thamodaran (’83 PhD economics) and his wife, Kanchana Thamodaran.