France soft wheat: yield nowcast
Thirteen regions, about 85% of French soft wheat area. Benchmarked against the European Commission's JRC MARS forecasts.
Explore
Every forecast, season by season
Pick a harvest year, a forecast date and a region. Everything updates: the forecast with its 80% interval, how the view moved through the season, and how this forecast date has scored over all seasons.
From orbit NOAA satellites
The crop, seen from space
Weekly vegetation health over the wheat area, 4 km pixels masked to wheat fields. The nowcast for this origin uses these satellite readings, each only once the week has been published. All origins on the satellite page →
This season against every season since 2000
VHI combines greenness (VCI) and heat stress (TCI); below 40 the crop is under stress.
Every season, week by week
Red: stress. Blue: healthy canopy.
Does the satellite see the yield?
Correlation r = -0.30 over 13 seasons.
Benchmark
Against the European Commission's forecasts
National yield, % error against the final Eurostat figure. The nowcast is taken before each MARS bulletin. 2016 (−29%, a wet spring that no weather-based forecast foresaw) dominates every score, so it is also shown without it.
Scorecard
| Bulletin | Sample | Seasons | Nowcast | MARS | Trend | Nowcast closer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May | all years | 13 | 13.7% | 13.6% | 13.5% | 6 of 13 |
| June | all years | 12 | 12.1% | 12.9% | 14.0% | 8 of 12 |
| May | without 2016 | 12 | 7.3% | 6.4% | 7.4% | 5 of 12 |
| June | without 2016 | 11 | 5.5% | 5.9% | 7.7% | 7 of 11 |
Level with MARS in May, slightly ahead in June. The next gains need a crop condition series (FranceAgriMer Céré'Obs) and regional satellite data.