AgML - Machine Learning for Agricultural Modeling

AgML is the AgMIP transdisciplinary community of agricultural and machine learning modelers.

AgML aspires to

• identify key research gaps and opportunities at the intersection of agricultural modelling and machine learning research,
• support enhanced collaboration and engagement between experts in these disciplines, and
• conduct and publish protocol-based studies to establish best practices for robust machine learning use in agricultural modelling.

AgML Crop Yield Forecasting

The objective of AgML Crop Yield Forecasting task is to create a benchmark to compare models for crop yield forecasting across countries and crops. The models and forecasts can be used for food security planning or famine early warning. The benchmark is called CY-Bench (crop yield benchmark).

Table of contents

• Overview
• Getting started
• Running the full benchmark
• Leaderboard
• How to cite
• How to contribute

Overview

Early in-season predictions of crop yields can inform decisions at multiple levels of the food value chain from late-season agricultural management such as fertilization, harvest, and storage to import or export of produce. Anticipating crop yields is also important to ensure market transparency at the global level ( e.g. Agriculture Market Information System, GEOGLAM Crop Monitor) and to plan response actions in food insecure countries at risk of food production shortfalls.

We propose CY-Bench, a dataset and benchmark for subnational crop yield forecasting, with coverage of major crop growing countries and underrepresented countries of the world for maize and wheat. By subnational, we mean the administrative level where yield statistics are published. When statistics are available for multiple levels, we pick the highest resolution. By yield, we mean end-of-season yield statistics as published by national statistics offices or similar entities representing a group of countries. By forecasting, we mean prediction is made ahead of harvest. The task is also called in-season crop yield forecasting. In-season forecasting is done at a number of time points during the growing season from start of season (SOS) to end of season (EOS) or harvest. The first forecast is made at middle-of-season (EOS - SOS)/2. Other options are quarter-of-season (EOS - SOS)/4 and n-day(s) before harvest. The exact time point or time step when forecast is made depends on the crop calendar for the selected crop and country (or region). All time series inputs are truncated up to the forecast or inference time point, i.e. data from the remaining part of the season is not used. Since yield statistics may not be available for the current season, we evaluate models using predictors and yield statistics for all available years. The models and forecasts can be used for food security planning or famine early warning. We compare models, algorithms and architectures by keeping other parts of the workflow as similar as possible. For example: the dataset includes same source for each type of predictor (e.g. weather variables, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, remote sensing biomass indicators, soil properties), and selected data are preprocessed using the same pipeline (use the crop mask, crop calendar; use the same boundary files and approach for spatial aggregation) and (for algorithms that require feature design) and same feature design protocol.

Coverage for maize

Undifferentiated Maize or Grain Maize where differentiated

Coverage for wheat

Undifferentiated Wheat or Winter Wheat where differentiated

Deciphering crop names

The terms used to reference different varieties or seasons of maize/wheat have been simplified in CY-Bench. The following table describes the representative crop name as provided in the crop statistics The terms used to reference different varieties or seasons of maize/wheat have been simplified in CY-Bench. The following table describes the representative crop names as provided in the crop statistics:

Country/Region	Maize	Wheat
EU-EUROSTAT	Grain Maize	Soft Wheat
Africa-FEWSNET	Maize	N/A
Argentina	Corn	Wheat
Australia	N/A	Winter Wheat
Brazil	Grain Corn	Grain Wheat
China	Grain Corn	Grain/Winter/Spring Wheat
Germany	Grain Maize	Winter Wheat
India	Maize	Wheat
Mali	Maize	N/A
Mexico	White/Yellow Corn	N/A
USA	Grain Corn	Winter Wheat

Targets

Getting started

cybench is an open source python library to load CY-Bench dataset and run the CY-Bench tasks.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/WUR-AI/AgML-CY-Bench

Requirements

Run the following commands to install dependencies or requirements.

pip install poetry
cd AgML-CY-Bench
poetry install

Downloading the sample dataset

You can work with a small sample of the dataset by running

git clone https://github.com/WUR-AI/sample_data.git cybench/data

from the AgML-CY-Bench folder.

Running a reduced version of the benchmark

To check everything is set up correctly, run

poetry run python cybench/runs/run_benchmark.py -d maize_NL -m test

Running the full benchmark

To run the benchmark for many crops and countries, follow the steps for installation and requirements from the previous section in a machine with significant amount of resources (memory and storage).

Get the dataset from Zenodo. After downloading the dataset, move the unzipped data inside AgML-CY-Bench/cybench/data or make sure AgML-CY-Bench/cybench/data points to the directory containing unzipped data.

Unzip the downloaded data:

unzip cybench-data.zip -d <target_dir>

Move the data to the expected data path:

mv <target_dir> cybench/data

or create a symbolic link from cybench/data to the target directory:

ln -sf <target_dir> cybench/data

Run the benchmark on a dataset using

poetry run python cybench/runs/run_benchmark.py -d maize_NL

If you want to write your own model and compare performance with the benchmark, write a model class your_model that extends the BaseModel class. The base model class definition is inside models.model.

from cybench.models.model import BaseModel
from cybench.runs.run_benchmark import run_benchmark

class MyModel(BaseModel): 
    pass


run_name = <run_name>
dataset_name = "maize_US"
result = run_benchmark(run_name=run_name, 
                       model_name="my_model",
                       model_constructor=MyModel,
                       model_init_kwargs: <int args>,
                       model_fit_kwargs: <fit params>,
                       dataset_name=dataset_name)

metrics = ["normalized_rmse", "mape", "r2"]
df_metrics = result["df_metrics"].reset_index()
print(df_metrics.groupby("model").agg({ m : "mean" for m in metrics }))

Compare the results (values of metrics for the specified dataset) with the baseline results for the same dataset.

Reproducing the baseline results

The baseline results were produced in the following test environment:

Operating system: Ubuntu 18.04
CPU: Intel Xeon Gold 6448Y (32 Cores)
memory (RAM): 256GB
disk storage: 2TB
GPU: NVIDIA RTX A6000

Benchmark run time

During the benchmark run with the baseline models, several countries were run in parallel, each in a GPU in a distributed cluster. The larger countries took approximately 18 hours to complete. If run sequentially in a single capable GPU, the whole benchmark should take 50-60 hours to complete.

Leaderboard

See tables inside results_baselines

Data sources

Crop Statistics	Shapefiles or administrative boundaries	Predictors, crop masks, crop calendars
Africa from FEWSNET	Africa from FEWSNET	Weather: AgERA5
Mali (1)	Use Africa shapefiles from FEWSNET	Soil: WISE soil data
Argentina	Argentina	Soil moisture: GLDAS
Australia	Australia	Evapotranspiration: FAO
Brazil	Brazil	FAPAR: JRC FAPAR
China	China	Crop calendars: ESA WorldCereal
EU	EU	NDVI: MOD09CMG
Germany (2)	Use EU shapefiles	Crop Masks: ESA WorldCereal
India	India
Mexico	Mexico
US	US

1: Mali data at admin level 3. Mali data is also included in the FEWSNET Africa dataset, but at admin level 1 only.

2: Germany data is also included in the EU dataset, but there most of the data fails coherence tests (e.g. yield = production / harvest_area)

How to cite

Please cite CY-bench as follows:

@dataset{kallenberg_etal2026,
  author       = {Kallenberg, Michiel and
                  Paudel, Dilli and
                  Baja, Hilmy and
                  van Bree, Ron and
                  Ofori-Ampofo, Stella and
                  Potze, Aike and
                  Poudel, Pratishtha and
                  Saleh, Abdelrahman and
                  Anderson, Weston and
                  von Bloh, Malte and
                  Castellano, Andres and
                  Ennaji, Oumnia and
                  Hamed, Raed and
                  Laudien, Rahel and
                  Lee, Donghoon and
                  Luna, Inti and
                  Masiliūnas, Dainius and
                  Meroni, Michele and
                  Mutuku, Janet Mumo and
                  Mkuhlani, Siyabusa and
                  Richetti, Jonathan and
                  Ruane, Alex C. and
                  Sahajpal, Ritvik and
                  Shuai, Guanyuan and
                  Sitokonstantinou, Vasileios and
                  de Souza Noia Junior, Rogerio and
                  Srivastava, Amit Kumar and
                  Strong, Robert and
                  Sweet, Lily-belle and
                  Vojnović, Petar and
                  de Wit, Allard and
                  Zachow, Maximilian and
                  Athanasiadis, Ioannis N.},
  title        = {{CY-Bench: A comprehensive benchmark dataset
                   for subnational crop yield forecasting}},
  year         = 2026,
  publisher    = {AgML (https://www.agml.org/)},
  version      = {1.0},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.11502142},
}

How to contribute

Thank you for your interest in contributing to AgML Crop Yield Forecasting. Please check contributing guidelines for how to get involved and contribute.

Additional information

For more information please visit the AgML website.