The number arrives, and it arrives with its working.
A yield of 6.2 tonnes a hectare tells you nothing. Establishment of 218 plants, 412 ears, a flag leaf spray four days late and twenty-one millimetres of June rain tells you everything, and that is what the harvest screen shows.
How yield is actually calculated.
The four components
- Plants per square metre
- Set at emergenceFrom seed rate, drill date, seedbed and slug pressure. The ceiling on everything after it.
- Ears per plant
- Set over winter and early springFrom tiller survival, which is set by nitrogen timing and by how hard the winter was.
- Grains per ear
- Set at flowering, in late MayThe most weather-exposed component and the least controllable. A hot dry week here is unrecoverable.
- Thousand grain weight
- Set during grain fill, June to JulyWhere the flag leaf spray earns its money, or does not.
What the screen shows
- The four components, as numbers
- AlwaysNot grades, not stars, not a letter. Actual counts.
- The contribution of each decision
- In tonnesThe late drilling cost 0.31 t/ha. The flag leaf saved 1.4. Both shown.
- The weather record for the season
- Month by monthBecause in about a third of seasons it is the whole explanation.
- A comparison with your own last three seasons
- AlwaysNever with another player’s, and never with a global average.
Quality, which is the second number
- Moisture at the weighbridge
- 14–22%Above 15 per cent it is dried, and drying costs money.
- Protein, on milling wheat
- 12.5% specMiss it and the load is feed, at about seventy per cent of the price.
- Nitrogen, on malting barley
- Under 1.85%The one spec where trying too hard makes it worse.
- Rejection rate
- ≈1 load in 12Which is roughly correct, and enormously annoying, and correct because it is annoying.
The four-component yield model is the standard agronomic one. It is used here because it is genuinely how the number is arrived at, and because it makes every earlier decision legible at the end.
One season, four numbers.
Why the working matters more than the number.
Every game in this category shows a yield and a coin total. Some of them show a star rating. None of them show why, because why is difficult to render and because the designers do not have a why — the number came out of a growth curve and a small random multiplier.
A farming game with a real model can afford to show its working, and showing it converts the whole exercise from a slot machine into something closer to a teaching tool. A player who has watched their own late drilling cost three hundredweight and buy back six has learned the single most contested decision in British arable farming, and they learned it by losing.
It also protects the design against its own randomness. When a player can see that the shortfall was twenty-one millimetres of June rain rather than anything they did, the failure is survivable. When they cannot see it, every bad season feels rigged, and in most games it quietly is.
What each crop yields, and what it is worth.
| Crop | Poor season | Ordinary | Good | Coins a tonne, spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter wheat | 4.1 t/ha | 7.8 t/ha | 9.4 t/ha | 178 |
| Winter barley | 3.9 t/ha | 6.8 t/ha | 8.1 t/ha | 164 |
| Spring barley, malting spec | 3.2 t/ha | 5.5 t/ha | 6.6 t/ha | 212 |
| Spring barley, feed | 3.2 t/ha | 5.5 t/ha | 6.6 t/ha | 158 |
| Spring oats | 3.4 t/ha | 4.9 t/ha | 5.8 t/ha | 146 |
| Oilseed rape | 0 t/ha, if the beetle took it | 3.3 t/ha | 4.2 t/ha | 388 |
| Durum wheat | 1.9 t/ha | 4.8 t/ha | 6.0 t/ha | 246 |
What actually happens at harvest.
The moisture reading comes in
And with it the decision that a real harvest turns on: cut it wet and pay for drying, or wait and risk the forecast.
The combine goes in
One long minute, and the one event Kaleb will not skip for you at any price.
The load is weighed and sampled
Tonnage, moisture, protein or nitrogen. This is where a milling crop becomes a feed crop, roughly one load in twelve.
The working is shown
Four components, every decision’s contribution in tonnes, the weather record, and your own last three seasons.
It goes into the barn
And Trading begins, which is the stage where the number becomes money or does not.
Harvesting, questioned.
No. It is one of the three things Kaleb refuses, along with the first drilling and the flag leaf decision, on the grounds that a time-skip that skips the good bit empties the game.
Because milling wheat that misses protein is feed wheat, at about seventy per cent of the price, and that is a real and frequent event on real farms. It is the cheapest way to teach that yield is not the only number.
The four-component structure is the standard agronomic one and the relationships between the components are right. The absolute numbers are compressed so that a season is a fortnight rather than a year.
Now sell it, or do not.
Spot, store or forward. Three routes, no correct answer, and a price series that moves on supply.
