Free to enter, points only, and nothing you can win is worth anything.
Six markets on real outcomes on this farm: the barley yield, the lambing percentage, the first combining date, whether the planning application passes. There is no stake, no entry fee, no prize of monetary value and nothing that can be exchanged for one. That is not a disclaimer at the bottom; it is the design.
Free to enter, points only, no prize of value
Free to enter, points only, no stake of any kind and no prize of any monetary value. Nothing here can be bought, sold, exchanged or redeemed, and there is no entry fee. That is what keeps this a game under the Gambling Act 2005 rather than a lottery or a betting product, and it is why the points will never become anything else.
Six markets, all settling on something checkable.
One guess per market per account, changeable until the market closes. The percentages are what everybody else has guessed, which is the interesting part and also the part that makes people change their minds.
What will the spring barley average across the Barley Block, in tonnes per hectare?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
What will the lambing percentage be this spring?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
On what date does the combine first move?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
Does the current planning application pass?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
How many millimetres of rain fall in June, at the farm gauge?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
Does Hawkstone top its regional growth list for a fourth consecutive year?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
Free to enter, points only, no stake of any kind and no prize of any monetary value. Nothing here can be bought, sold, exchanged or redeemed, and there is no entry fee. That is what keeps this a game under the Gambling Act 2005 rather than a lottery or a betting product, and it is why the points will never become anything else.
Why a farm is unusually good at this.
A prediction market needs outcomes that are uncertain, resolvable and interesting. Most consumer brands have none of those: nobody is uncertain about next quarter’s product colours and nobody would be interested if they were.
A farm has them constantly. The yield is genuinely unknown until the last trailer is weighed. The lambing percentage is unknown until the last ewe lambs. The combining date is unknown to everybody including the person driving the combine. And every one of them settles on a number that gets published anyway.
It also has the thing that makes a market worth reading, which is a resident expert who is frequently wrong. Charlie Ireland’s February yield estimate has been out by more than a tonne a hectare in three of the last five years, and the crowd has beaten him twice.
The six markets, and how each one settles.
| Market | Settles on | Source of truth | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring barley yield, t/ha | The weighed tonnage over the field area | Weighbridge tickets, published | August |
| Lambing percentage | Lambs reared per hundred ewes put to the tup | The lambing record | Late April |
| First combining date | The day the header first goes into a crop here | The camera timestamp | July or August |
| The planning application | The determination, or the appeal decision | The council’s public register | On determination |
| June rainfall | Millimetres at the on-farm gauge | The farm weather station | 1 July |
| The regional growth ranking | Whether Hawkstone tops it again | The published ranking | When it appears |
Who has actually been right.
Points, and only points. They cannot be spent, converted, gifted or redeemed, and the leaderboard is the entire prize.
All parishesThis season
- 01 A member in the Wolds Five markets called, four correct 412
- 02 A member in the Marches Six markets called, four correct 388
- 03 A member in the Fens Six markets called, three correct, two very close 341
- 04 Youyou Two markets called, one correct 96
- 05 A member in the Cotswolds Six markets called, two correct 88
- 06 Charlie Ireland The agronomist. Six markets called, two correct 71
- 07 A member in the Broads One market called, correct 64
The agronomist is sixth, which is roughly where he usually is and a source of considerable pleasure to everybody else on this list.
The rest of Guessing.
Have a guess.
Six markets, no stake, and a leaderboard that is the whole reward.
