Choosing Crops for Profit, Not Just Yield: An AI-Assisted Framework

Many AI tools in agriculture predict crop yield or crop price. They are usually judged on how accurate the prediction is. But a farmer does not only care about accuracy. A farmer cares about profit: the money left after all costs are paid. In this article I propose a simple framework that joins three parts: a yield forecast, a price forecast, and a cost estimate. It ranks crops by expected profit and by risk-adjusted profit. I explain the maths clearly, point out a common mistake (multiplying average yield by average price when the two are related), and show a worked example with a wheat, rice and maize choice for a Punjab-style farm. The numbers in the example are made up to explain the method, and I say so clearly. I also describe how the method should be tested on real data (FAO, NASA POWER, World Bank and local market prices) before anyone claims it works in practice.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-09-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23010987
Primary Topic
Smart Agriculture and AI
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Choosing Crops for Profit, Not Just Yield: An AI-Assisted Framework

Abdul Raffay
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Smart Agriculture and AI
article

Choosing Crops for Profit, Not Just Yield: An AI-Assisted Framework

Abdul Raffay
article en

Abstract

Many AI tools in agriculture predict crop yield or crop price. They are usually judged on how accurate the prediction is. But a farmer does not only care about accuracy. A farmer cares about profit: the money left after all costs are paid. In this article I propose a simple framework that joins three parts: a yield forecast, a price forecast, and a cost estimate. It ranks crops by expected profit and by risk-adjusted profit. I explain the maths clearly, point out a common mistake (multiplying average yield by average price when the two are related), and show a worked example with a wheat, rice and maize choice for a Punjab-style farm. The numbers in the example are made up to explain the method, and I say so clearly. I also describe how the method should be tested on real data (FAO, NASA POWER, World Bank and local market prices) before anyone claims it works in practice.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Zero hunger
Openalex Percentile: Top 14%
Smart Agriculture and AI
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