The measured yield of a paddock comes from the combine’s yield monitor and belongs to the producer: nobody publishes it. What is public is the yield of each district, season by season, and how green the paddock was, measured by satellite. With those two things you can estimate whether the paddock yielded above or below its district, and by how much.
How it is calculated
Rinde del lote = Rinde del partido × (Verde del lote ÷ Verde de referencia) ^ Elasticidad
- District yield: production over harvested area of that crop in that district and that season, according to the Ministry of Agriculture
- Paddock green: the NDVI accumulated fortnight by fortnight from November to May, minus 0.20, which is what bare soil gives
- Reference green: the same, measured on up to twelve plots of about 25 hectares in the same district that the National Crop Map shows with that crop in that season
- Elasticity: how much the yield moves when the green moves; 1.35 for soybean and 1.7 for maize
First comes what was planted: if the National Crop Map does not show a summer crop on at least half of the paddock, that season is not estimated. A pasture is green all year and would give a very high soybean yield that never existed.
The comparison is against paddocks of the same crop, in the same district and the same year, not against a fixed value: that way a drought, a frost or a good year affects both sides equally, and what remains is the paddock’s own difference.
Only November to May is used because the winter green does not belong to this crop: a wheat before a second soybean would add to the soybean what grew in July.
Where the elasticity comes from
It was measured by comparing, in Carmen de Areco, Pergamino and Junín, the district yield with the reference green over four seasons, from 2020/21 to 2023/24, including the 2022/23 drought. For soybean, the green explains the yield well: the typical error was 11%. For maize it is weaker, 18%, because the index saturates earlier and an excellent maize looks almost the same as a good one.
| Crop | Elasticity | Margin shown |
|---|---|---|
| Soybean | 1.35 | ±15% |
| Maize | 1.7 | ±20% |
| Sunflower and sorghum | Uncalibrated | Are not estimated |
What it does not see
Where each figure comes from
- District yield: Agricultural Estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.
- What was planted: INTA’s National Crop Map, at 30 metres, one layer per summer season.
- The green: Sentinel-2 images from the Copernicus program, at 10 meters, with clouds discarded pixel by pixel.