arXiv Machine Learning

Accurate prediction is not profitable advice: profit-based evaluation of machine learning nitrogen recommendations in winter wheat

The study evaluates machine learning models for nitrogen recommendations in winter wheat by directly scoring profit loss on 892 yield response curves, rather than relying on prediction accuracy. Results show that none of the models recover the best rate within farm tolerance, and at typical prices all models underperform standard UK advice. A simple post‑model correction step reduces profit losses by up to 43% without retraining, while a hybrid approach further mitigates bias and large losses.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Profit based evaluation of machine learning for nitrogen recommendations in winter wheat

The study evaluates machine learning for nitrogen recommendations in winter wheat by directly scoring profit loss on 892 yield response curves, rather than relying on prediction accuracy. Results show that ML models alone fail to recover the best nitrogen rate within farm tolerance and underperform standard UK advice across price scenarios. However, a simple post‑model correction step significantly reduces profit losses, and a hybrid approach combining standard advice with a damped correction eliminates bias and large losses.

By Xulong Wang, Po Yang
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 27

Profit based evaluation of machine learning for nitrogen recommendations in winter wheat

The paper evaluates machine learning for nitrogen recommendations in winter wheat by directly scoring the profit lost on measured yield response curves, rather than relying on prediction accuracy. Using 892 yield curves from UK experiments, the authors find that machine learning models fail to recover the best nitrogen rate within farm tolerance and generally underperform standard UK advice in terms of profit. However, a simple post‑model correction step can reduce profit losses by up to 43% without retraining, suggesting that machine learning can enhance standard advice rather than replace it.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

When Prices Double in a Week: Forecasting of Agricultural Volatility in Import-Isolated Markets

arXiv:2606. 29248v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vegetable prices in Sri Lanka are highly volatile because the market is largely import-isolated, so supply disruptions quickly drive prices up.

By Ranuga Weerasekara, Heshan Nethmina, Manuja Ranathunga, Vinma Wettasinghe, Dinithi Navodya, Subavarshana Arumugam, Nirasha Munasinghe, Nisansa de Silva, Sandareka Wickramanayake
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 29

Non-Linear Model-Based Sequential Decision-Making in Agriculture

arXiv:2509. 01924v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Agricultural decision-making faces a dual challenge: sustaining high yields to meet global food security needs while reducing the environmental impacts of input use, including fertilizer losses and other agrochemical applications such as herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.

By Sakshi Arya, Wentao Lin
arXiv Machine Learning
2d ago

An Input-Frugal Deep Learning Framework for Weather-Driven National Crop-Yield Forecasting: A Case Study of Brazilian Soybean

The paper introduces a lightweight deep learning framework that forecasts Brazilian soybean yields using only routine weather data and two simple static inputs (crop year and agro-environmental label). Across 20 seasons, transformer-based models achieved the highest accuracy, outperforming traditional ridge regression and a moving‑average baseline by nearly 48%. Ablation studies show that the static inputs and spatial expansion improve performance without adding complexity, and SHAP analysis highlights the importance of crop year and weather variables in driving yield variations.

By Fernando Dupin da Cunha Mello (Stricto Sensu Department, SENAI CIMATEC University, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil), Prashant Kumar (Global Centre for Clean Air Research), Erick G. Sperandio Nascimento (Stricto Sensu Department, SENAI CIMATEC University, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil)
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Evaluating and improving crop-yield forecasting methods during extreme drought

The study evaluates crop‑yield forecasting methods for the 2012 Midwestern US drought, comparing non‑deep learning machine learning models with a deep learning model (VITA) using 16 meteorological predictors. It highlights challenges such as distributional dissimilarity between training and test data, spatial and temporal sparsity, and demonstrates that sample weighting and feature selection improve non‑deep learning models but not VITA. The work contrasts deep versus non‑deep learning approaches and shows how modifications can mitigate issues arising from extreme drought conditions.

By Shrey Gupta, Yi Ming, George Mohler
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Deep Learning for Cross-Border Electricity Price Forecasting: A Comparative Study

The paper presents a comparative study of six deep learning models—state-space, MLP, RNN, and Transformer-based architectures—for cross-border electricity price forecasting using publicly available data. It focuses on generalization across markets and evaluates performance under low-data target-market conditions (zero-shot, one-shot, few-shot) with a standardized dataset for the Germany‑Luxembourg bidding zone in 2024. Results show that N‑HiTS and NBEATSx perform competitively in limited‑data scenarios, while transformer models achieve comparable accuracy but require more adaptation and tuning, and that careful feature selection and hyperparameter tuning improve performance.

By Hadeer Elashhab, Sai Srijan Papineni, Marvin Dorn, Veit Hagenmeyer, Benjamin Sch\"afer