Yield maps in 3D: read yield against the lie of the land
Phase stands a yield map up on the paddock's real ground and shows whether the hollows or the rises yielded more, with a figure for each fifth of the paddock.
A flat yield map shows where the paddock did well and where it did not. It does not show why. A lot of the time the answer is the ground itself: a hollow that sat wet, a rise that ran out of moisture, a slope that shed its rain.
Phase can now stand a yield map up on the paddock's real ground, so you can read the two together.
What you see
Open Yield Centre → Maps and choose 3D. The paddock is drawn as its actual ground, rises and low spots and all, with the yield map laid over it in the map's own colours. Drag to turn it, and pinch or scroll to zoom.
Most broadacre paddocks only fall a few metres across a kilometre, which is hard to see at true scale. Height stretches the rise and fall so it shows, and tells you how many times it has been stretched. True scale puts it back.
Tap or point at any spot for its yield, how that compares with the paddock average, its height, and how far it sits above the paddock's lowest point.
Yield by height
This is the part that answers the question. Yield by height splits the paddock into five bands of equal area, from the highest fifth to the lowest fifth, and gives each band its average yield. Under it is one plain sentence saying whether the low ground yielded less, more, or no clear difference.
Tap a band and that ground is picked out on the paddock, so you can see exactly which country it is talking about.
You can also switch the colours from Yield to Height, which shades the ground dark where it is low and light where it is high.
Where the ground comes from
The first time someone opens 3D, Phase fetches the ground under all of the farm's paddocks at once and keeps it. It comes from a 30 metre satellite elevation model, the same one worldwide. An owner or manager needs to be the first to open it. After that every paddock opens straight away for everyone on the farm.
If a paddock already has its own elevation layer in Phase Spatial, from a survey or RTK data, Phase uses that instead.
A 30 metre model is a good guide to the shape of a paddock. On very flat country, treat the fine detail as a guide only.
Getting yield maps into Phase
On Phase Ultra, yield maps from connected John Deere machines land in Yield Centre on the paddock they came from. On any make of machinery, you can load a yield map as a zipped shapefile.
What to do with it
The useful part is what happens next. If the low fifth of a paddock is dragging the average down year after year, that is a drainage question. If the rises are the poor country, it may be a soil or nutrition question. Phase Spatial has the same 3D ground, and can run rain, a frost night or wind over a paddock to show where water sits and cold air collects.
One farm record, not a separate mapping tool
Yield maps are not a product on their own in Phase. Phase is all-in-one farm management software, so the yield on this map is the same figure that sits on the paddock's sheet beside its crop plan and soil tests, and the same figure behind its gross margin. From a poor patch on the map you can open what was planned, what was actually applied and what the soil test said, without leaving the app.