On April 10, we released our first statewide almond forecast for 2019 to our customers and partners.
Vinsight yield forecast: 2,170 lbs/acre
Vinsight estimated bearing acres: 1,130,000 acres
Vinsight production forecast: 2,452,100,000 lbs
Some background, when we forecast, we do so on the basis of yield to get an accurate performance metric for almond trees. This is how we normalize the fluctuation in production and bearing acres from year to year.
Our objective is to remove bias and allow the data to accurately forecast yield. We look at several datasets to include but not limited to weather, remote imagery, soil, location, age, variety, management practices, irrigation and historical yield.
When forecasting, we start with agronomy and look at the important phenological cycles for the crop. We then compare that with the data we collect and leverage machine learning algorithms to learn trends over time. The more data and time that passes, the more accurate our models become.
Some trends we’ve seen so far this growing season include, higher than average chill during bloom (although less than last year), significantly higher than average precipitation (especially during bloom) and fairly consistent temperature trends during the dormancy…
