Patent Document ID: 9201991
Application ID: 14603383
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: ingesting, as input data, weather information and crop-specific information for a crop to be harvested, and field-specific information for a location where an agricultural commodity is planted, the weather information including recent and current field-level weather data and extended-range weather forecast data, and the crop-specific information including at least one of crop type data and harvest data that at least includes a temporal harvest window; modeling the input data in a plurality of data processing modules within a computing environment in which the plurality of data processing modules are executed in conjunction with at least one processor, the data processing modules configured to profile expected costs of forced-air or fuel-based mechanical drying of a crop due to early harvest, and expected costs of crop yield loss due to susceptibility of in-field crop to adverse weather, by 1) predicting expected weather conditions relative to crop moisture levels during in-field dry-down of a crop in a particular field within the temporal harvest window and relative to energy consumption of the drying process for a drying facility using at least one of fuel-based drying or forced-air mechanical drying; 2) applying the expected weather conditions, the crop-specific information, the field-specific information, and one or more sampled observations from a planted field to at least one of an agricultural model of one or more physical and empirical characteristics impacting in-field dry-down of an agricultural commodity, to simulate a crop moisture level within the temporal harvest window; 3) estimating a time-varying potential for crop yield loss due to adverse weather in the expected weather conditions and an associated unit cost of the crop yield loss, and an overall time-varying unit cost of forced-air or fuel-based drying; 4) comparing a cost of a) at least one of forced-air and fuel-based drying associated with earlier harvest of the crop, and b) crop yield loss from adverse weather conditions predicted prior to crop harvest; and generating, as output data, one or more advisories representing a risk assessment of drying costs and costs from crop yield loss in a harvest output condition profile.