Gro Yield Model Forum
Welcome to Gro’s Yield Model Forum! Please feel free to post any comments, feedback, or questions here. Note that you can opt to receive email notifications to stay updated on the threads you comment by going into your user settings.
Check out our yield model page to learn more about the model and download our paper: https://gro-intelligence.com/yield-model
54 results found
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Weekly Commentary - August 11, 2017
Yesterday, the USDA released its August estimate for US corn yield at 169.5 bushels/acre, down 1.2 bushels/acre from the earlier estimate of 170.7. With market expectations near 166, and Gro’s model at 166.8, this number was indisputably bearish. Corn futures prices reacted by dropping 4% in short order. From this new lower price level, Gro’s model remains bullish, currently calling for a further 2.7 bushels/acre decline before harvest.
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Weekly Commentary - August 9, 2017
Gro’s US corn yield forecast stands at 166.80 bushels/acre (or 10.47 tonnes/hectare), up from 164.33 (or 10.31) last week and just in time for the important August 10th USDA report tomorrow. The increase in our forecast was mainly driven by signals indicating stronger crop health across the US Corn Belt.
Our model’s increase flies in the face of declining condition averages, and probably means that our yield estimate is now higher than trade opinion for the first time this year. We believe that the majority of corn market participants use a simple linear method for estimating yield using the percent…
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progressive yield limits
Over the past few weeks your estimate has risen from 156 to 162, then back to 159 & up to 160. Granted that growing conditions can improve and lead to a better yield but corn is determinate type crop. To a considerable extent conditions at a certain stage determine the maximum potential going forward. Ear length & kernel row number is determined in the final vegetative stages, pollination success determines the number of kernels. And while it is true that good weather during kernel fill can compensate for fewer kernels with heavier kernels there is a limit.
Does your model…2 votes -
true yld?
On your home page you show your July & August predictions against "true yield". Is the "true yield" you refer to the USDA's final yield? Or do you have some other number?
2 votesTrue yield refer to USDA final reported yield published the following year.
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Weekly Commentary - July 31, 2017
Gro’s US corn yield model estimate has broken dramatically higher in a price-bearish fashion from 160.92 bushels/acre (or 10.10 tonnes/hectare) to 164.33 (or 10.31), mainly driven by much stronger satellite-based vegetation health numbers (NDVI). Gro’s yield estimate is now close to the average trade estimate, but both are still well below the USDA’s number and trend yield. This fact can be construed as bullish for prices, but has been true for the whole season to date. This positive 3.4 bushel/acre shift in one week is bearish at the margin by any standard.
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Weekly Commentary - July 23, 2017
Gro’s US corn yield model estimate has risen to 160.92 bushels/acre (or 10.10 tonnes/hectare) from 159.99 (or 10.04). Since the last reading, satellite-based vegetation health numbers (NDVI) have improved along with land surface temperatures. Despite this increase, the Gro estimate is bullishly well below both the average trade estimate and trend yield.
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We believe that our trend model accounts for a tendency for earlier planting, as well as other multiyear trends that are already in progress. The trend model runs at the beginning of each growing season.
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We believe that our trend model accounts for a tendency for earlier planting, as well as other multiyear trends that are already in progress. The trend model runs at the beginning of each growing season.
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1 vote
In our understanding, “phenological growth data” would be data that makes specific reference to growth stages of corn plants. We have not incorporated data of that specific nature in the forecast, but we believe that its predictive value is captured by other features that are in our suite of models.
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Weekly Commentary - July 17, 2017
Breaking a four-week trend, Gro’s US corn yield model estimate has fallen from 162.42 bushels/acre (or 10.19 tonnes/hectare) to 159.99 (or 10.04). We have begun to release yield estimates on a daily basis as new data comes in. Since changes will be much more incremental as a result, we will only provide commentary when events justify it.
Both subpar satellite-based vegetation health numbers (NDVI) and declining condition ratings have combined to reduce our estimate this week, which is clearly still below the industry’s collective opinion and trend yield. If we end up with only 159.99 bushels/acre in US corn this…
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1 vote
One of the features we tested that did not make it to the final model was crop density (plants/acre from NASS). It shows high correlation with crop yields, but not with deviations from our current yield model.
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1 vote
The corn crop mask used in our current process are five different types of static masks (generated using yearly CDLs from USDA), that are applied across all years. They are static masks with different confidence level of approximation to the truth. For example, we have a low confidence mask that classifies the pixels as corn, which have been corn pixels for at least a year in CDLs.
However, for our Argentine soybean model we generated our own algorithm since crop mask data doesn’t exist there, and we will soon look at applying it to the US corn model as well. -
Weekly Commentary - July 7, 2017
For the fourth week in a row, Gro’s corn yield model estimate has risen, from 160.47 bushels/acre (or 10.07 tonnes/hectare) to 162.42 (or 10.19), another almost-2-bushel/acre rise. The primary drivers of the rise appear to have been increased crop health detected from satellite based vegetation signals and simultaneously rising USDA crop condition scores. The model is still below USDA and trade estimates and therefore can still be seen as bullish for corn prices.
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Weekly Commentary - June 29, 2017
Gro’s US corn yield estimate has risen again, from 157.51 bushels/acre (or 9.89 tonnes/hectare) to 160.47 (or 10.07), a significant increase of almost 3 bushels/acre. Geospatially-derived NDVI data has driven the change, coupled with improving condition ratings. We’re concerned about unusually high proportions of “very poor”- and “poor”-rated fields in Indiana and the Dakotas, but so far they have not outweighed the better rated crops elsewhere.
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Weekly Commentary - June 22, 2017
Once again, Gro’s US corn yield estimate has risen, from 156.74 bushels/acre (or 9.84 tonnes/hectare) to 157.51 (or 9.89). Better crop conditions in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana drove the change in the number, but we’re also starting to see significant effects from NDVI as the crop matures. Despite the increases of the past two weeks, at 157.51, our model result still comes in well below market yield expectations and therefore would contribute to a forecast for higher corn prices.
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We have a widely disparate population of users including representatives of the following sectors:
Academia
Hedge funds
Physical hedgers/trade houses
Government
Agricultural lenders
Physical suppliers/logistics companies
Insurance providersThe breadth of our universe of data is very wide and constantly growing. We can’t possibly imagine all the uses that our audience is putting it to, but three examples that have come to our attention are:
-Early warning of local crop failure to policymakers for prepositioning of emergency stocks and food shortage countermeasures
-Provision of economic sourcing alternatives during a period of volatile trade policy
-Avoiding repetitious entry of obscure and inconveniently formatted statistics for use in financial models
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1 vote
The satellite images we use are primarily from MODIS, specifically, for LST we use the MODIS MOD11 product which has a spatial resolution of 1km and is collected daily. As for NDVI, we actually use a product from GIMMS which combines both MODIS platforms (MOD09 from the Terra satellite and MYD09 from the Aqua satellite) and this product has a spatial resolution of 250m with a temporal resolution of 8 days.
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1 vote
Yes for major crops in United states. CDL has crop specific masks covering corn, soybeans, wheat, and so on. For regions where there is no available crop specific mask, we are able to create the yearly masks with NDVI imagery through geospatial processing.
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1 vote
In order to predict the current year’s corn yield, we need the current year’s corn mask, which is not available from USDA until the following year. Instead of using a current year corn mask from USDA (which does not exist), we created a set of static masks from yearly CDL, namely low confidence and high confidence ones.
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1 vote
For the most recent forecast (as of June 13 with a backtest) at the county level, 52.06% of counties are predicted within 15.8 bushel/acre. At the national level, the mean error rate is 5.21%.
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