ACYD: Agricultural Crop Yield Dataset

Overview

The Agricultural Crop Yield Dataset (ACYD) provides weekly, admin-2 level covariates for Argentina, Brazil, and the USA from 1979–2024.
It is designed for crop yield prediction and benchmarking.

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Variables

Weather Variables

• Temperature 2m max
• Temperature 2m min
• Wind speed 10m
• Reference evapotranspiration (RefET)
• Vapor pressure
• Snow water equivalent
• Solar radiation
• Precipitation

Source:

• 1979-2024: AG-ERA5, collected daily and averaged weekly. 495 departments and no missing values. Processing: Applied HYDE-3.5 cropland mask within admin boundaries for each year; values are weighted averages over cropland fraction.

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Land Surface Variables

• Leaf Area Index (LAI) Low (crops, grass, shrubs, etc.)
• Leaf Area Index (LAI) High (forests, woody vegetation)
• Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)

483 departments and there are some missing values (see below)

Source:

• LAI: ERA5 Landscape Reanalysis, collected weekly and averaged.

• NDVI: NOAA AVHRR Climate Data Record (CDR), collected weekly and averaged.

  • 1982–2013: AVHRR NDVI (Version 4, derived from AVHRR Surface Reflectance).
  • 2014–2024: NOAA Climate Data Record of AVHRR NDVI (updated product).

Processing:

Applied HYDE-3.5 cropland mask within admin boundaries for each year; values are weighted averages over cropland fraction.

LAI does not have missing values; however, NDVI does have missing weeks, particularly during the years 1994 and earlier. Missing values are kept as NaN.

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Soil Variables

• Bulk density
• Cation exchange capacity (CEC)
• Clay content
• Coarse fragments
• Nitrogen content
• Organic carbon density
• Organic carbon content
• Soil pH (H₂O)
• Sand fraction
• Silt fraction

Source: SoilGrids / ISRIC (static soil properties) published in 2020. 500 departments and no missing value. Processing: Aggregated at the admin-2 level (no cropland mask applied).

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Geography

• Argentina
  • weather: 495 departments,
  • Land Surface: 483 departments
  • soil: 500 departments
  • crop yields: vary 181-296 departments

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Crops Covered

• Argentina: Corn, Soybean, Sunflower, Wheat

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Time Span

• weather, LAI: 1979–2024
• crop yields: 1970–2025 (depending on crop/country)
• soil: static (data was first published in 2020)

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Files

• Raw files — direct pulls from source datasets.
• Processed CSVs — one file per variable, aggregated to admin-2 units, with weighted average on the boundaries.

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Licenses

This dataset (ACYD) integrates multiple open data sources.
All preprocessing code and benchmark packaging is released under the MIT License.
The underlying data retains its original licenses:

• ERA5 / AgERA5: Copernicus license (CC BY 4.0 equivalent)
• NOAA AVHRR NDVI: Public Domain (U.S. Government work)
• HYDE 3.5 Cropland: CC BY 4.0
• USDA NASS (USA yields): Public Domain
• IBGE (Brazil yields): CC BY 3.0
• MAGyP (Argentina yields): CC BY 4.0
• FAO (if included): CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Users must comply with these original licenses when reusing the dataset.