Water, Crops, and Data: A Nigerian Scientist’s Growing Role in U.S. Agriculture

By Salami Adeyinka

As global population growth continues to intensify demand for food, agricultural systems are under increasing pressure to produce more with fewer natural resources, particularly as arable land and freshwater availability per capita continue to decline. In this context, research that combines scientific rigor with practical application has become increasingly important. In the United States, one of the emerging contributors to this effort is Olabisi Tolulope Somefun, a Nigerian-born agricultural scientist whose work is helping to refine how water is managed, crops are modeled, and production decisions are made in humid farming regions, areas where efficient resource use is both agronomically and economically important.

Based in North Carolina, Somefun’s research addresses a central challenge facing modern agriculture: how to sustain crop productivity while improving water-use efficiency under variable environmental conditions. Her work sits at the intersection of agronomy, environmental science, and data-driven modeling, an approach that has attracted increasing attention within academic and professional agricultural circles due to its relevance to real-world production systems.

Somefun’s academic training began at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), where she specialized in plant physiology and crop production. During her graduate studies, she concentrated on intercropping systems in the humid tropics, evaluating how management strategies, particularly sowing date and nutrient management—influence crop interactions and land productivity. This work resulted in peer-reviewed publications that continue to inform agronomic approaches to mixed cropping systems and reflect early evidence of independent scientific inquiry.

One of these studies, published in Crop and Pasture Science, examined the productivity of sesame intercropped with sunflower under different management conditions. A second article from the same body of work – recently published in HELIA, has since been recognized by the journal as a top-ranked article, reflecting sustained interest in its findings. Together, these publications established an early pattern in Somefun’s career: addressing practical production problems through carefully designed field research that yields broadly applicable insights.

Now a USDA-funded PhD researcher at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Somefun has extended this foundation into advanced studies on irrigation management and crop-environment interactions. Her current research examines how water availability and temperature variability influence tomato production in humid environments, using a combination of field experiments, sensor-based monitoring, and crop simulation models. By integrating environmental data with decision-support tools, her work contributes to improving irrigation timing and resource allocation while maintaining yield stability, an outcome of direct relevance to U.S. agricultural producers.

This approach reflects a broader shift in agricultural research toward actionable analytics, where the value of scientific models lies not in technical complexity alone but in their capacity to inform decisions under real production constraints. Somefun’s work aligns with this shift by translating complex datasets into recommendations that are meaningful to growers, extension agents, and agricultural administrators, reinforcing the connection between research outputs and operational decision-making.
Beyond research, she plays an active role in agricultural outreach and professional engagement. Through field demonstrations, extension activities, and farmer-focused programs, she contributes to the dissemination of water-efficient practices and data-informed management strategies. These efforts mirror the land-grant mission of connecting research outputs with on-farm implementations.
Her contributions have been recognized through multiple academic and professional honors. Most recently, she was selected for the American Farm Bureau-MANRRS Fellowship, a competitive national program associated with the Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Leadership Conference. The fellowship recognises emerging leaders whose work strengthens agricultural systems and supports farming communities, an acknowledgment that places Somefun among a select group of early-career professionals shaping the future of agriculture in the United States.

While her research is grounded in U.S. production systems, its implications extend beyond national boundaries. The challenges she addresses – water efficiency, crop resilience, and data-driven decision-making, are shared by farming regions across Africa and other parts of the world. In this sense, her work exemplifies how scientific training rooted in Nigerian institutions continues to influence global agricultural practice through the diaspora.

It is this combination of local application and broader relevance that defines the growing significance of Somefun’s work. By translating field data and analytical models into tools that inform real production decisions, her contributions are shaping how agricultural systems respond to resource constraints and environmental variability. In doing so, she is positioning research as a driver of more resilient, efficient, and adaptive food systems, outcomes with lasting relevance for producers, institutions, and agricultural policy alike.