Harvest data is the collection of measurements recorded during crop harvesting — yield volume, grain moisture, machine speed, header position, and GPS coordinates — that together describe exactly what was produced and where. It is the definitive performance metric for a growing season and the most valuable dataset in precision agriculture.
What Harvest Data Includes
When you query harvest data through FieldMCP, you receive:
- Yield measurements — Georeferenced points with crop volume (bushels/acre or tonnes/hectare). See yield mapping for details on how this data is collected.
- Moisture readings — Grain moisture percentage at each point, essential for calculating dry yield and storage decisions.
- Machine data — Combine speed, header width, separator loss, and other telematics metrics recorded during harvest.
- Timestamps — When each section of the field was harvested, enabling analysis of harvest timing and logistics.
- Crop identification — What crop and variety was harvested in each field.
Data Quality Considerations
Raw harvest data requires cleaning before analysis. Common issues developers need to handle:
- Start/stop artifacts — Yield sensors need time to stabilize when the combine starts a pass or turns at row ends. These readings produce artificial highs and lows.
- Overlap corrections — Adjacent passes may overlap, creating duplicate measurements.
- Moisture calibration — Onboard moisture sensors drift over time and may need calibration factors.
- GPS accuracy — Sub-meter GPS errors accumulate at high harvest speeds.
FieldMCP's data normalization layer applies basic quality filters, but applications performing detailed analysis should implement additional cleaning.
Developer Use Cases
- Season summaries — Aggregate harvest data by field, farm, or region to produce production reports
- Year-over-year comparison — Track yield trends across seasons to evaluate management changes
- Input ROI — Correlate harvest data with input costs (seed, fertilizer, chemical) to calculate return on investment per zone
Accessing Harvest Data
FieldMCP provides MCP tools for querying harvest data by field and season. See the tools reference for available operations.
