Cornerpost Logic

Yield Predictor

How to Use the Yield Predictor

The Yield Predictor shows your county's corn and soybean yields since 2000, how close a model built from weather, soils and irrigation would have come each year, and how this season's weather compares with a normal one and with the drought years 2012 and 2022. It covers every Nebraska and Iowa county USDA reports. It's free, with no sign-in needed.

Getting Started

  1. Pick your county. On Your County, press Change County, choose the state and county, then Show This County. This browser remembers it for next time.
  2. Or sign in. Sign In uses your My Farm account; the page then opens on your farm's county.
  3. Choose the crop. Corn or Soybeans, at the right of the white row.
  4. Read the page top down. Last harvest and the model's range for it, a trend year, how often the ranges held; then This Season So Far; then every year since 2000.

How Do I…

See another county?

Change County, pick it, Show This County. The address in your browser now names that county, so you can bookmark it or send it to someone.

See the exact numbers behind the chart?

Under the chart, Show the Numbers lists every year: the yield, the model's range and whether it landed inside. Holding the pointer on a dot shows the same.

Compare counties on a map?

Maps opens every county, every year. It still opens in the first version of the Yield Predictor while it moves here.

Find out how the model works and how it was tested?

Research, or How It Works and How We Test under Learn.

Sign out?

Your name in the green bar, then Sign Out. It signs you out of My Farm too, and so of every app.

What the Numbers Mean

  • Harvest (bu/acre): USDA's county yield for all of that crop, irrigated and dryland together.
  • The model's 80% range: where the model said the county's yield would land, from that year's weather, the county's soils and how much is irrigated. The model that made it never saw this county's part of the state (its USDA crop district), so it's a fair test. An honest 80% range misses about 1 year in 5: missing none would mean the range is wider than it needs to be.
  • A trend year: a straight line through the county's own yields, carried one year on. It is not a forecast of this season.
  • This Season So Far: rain since May 1, days over 90°F and July rain, from the county's NASA POWER weather. Normal is the 2000 to 2025 average over the same days; 2012 and 2022 are cut to the same days too.
  • Dryland: USDA's non-irrigated yields for the county, which it stopped publishing by county after 2018.

Past yields and a model's ranges, for planning; not a forecast or financial advice. How We Test shows how the model was checked.

When Something Looks Wrong

  • The page is slow to open: online, it naps when nobody's using it. Wait a minute and reload.
  • A year is missing: USDA didn't publish that county's yield that year (it holds back a county's number when too few farms report). The chart says which years.
  • No ranges for my county: the model needs every input for a county-year, and some are missing in a few counties where little of the crop is grown (their crop rotation, for one). Their yields are still shown.
  • No season card: before May 1 there's no season yet, and Iowa's season weather comes next.
  • The newest days are missing: the weather runs a few days behind; the card says the last day it covers.

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