The Benchmarks feature is a powerful tool designed to help you analyse and improve the performance of your cultivations. By comparing your data against an external peer group, you can gain a clear overview of how your cultivations are performing across key metrics during a specific calendar week. This helps you quickly identify areas of strength and opportunity.
Please note
This feature is currently only available for tomato cultivations
The benchmark and cultivation performance values for the previous calendar week are available on Tuesday morning.
Bar Charts
For a more granular view, the detailed bar charts offer a direct, side-by-side comparison of a selected cultivation's performance against its benchmark for a range of key metrics.
What you see: Each bar chart clearly displays two key values for the chosen calendar week:
The performance of your selected cultivations.
The average performance of the relevant benchmark peer group.
Metrics: The available metrics for comparison are crucial indicators of cultivation health and productivity. These include:
Harvest per m² (weekly net)
Light utilization efficiency
Approximated heat usage (kWh/m²)
Fruit weight
HPS lighting time (daily)
LED lighting time (daily)
Set fruits (weekly)
Flowering speed (weekly)
Plant Balance Factor (beta)
Defining the Benchmark
The benchmark value is not a static number; it is a dynamic average of all other cultivations that meet specific criteria for a given calendar week.
Peer Group Definition: A peer group is fundamentally defined by the segment to which a cultivation belongs. We have internally classified all varieties into different segments to create relevant and meaningful peer groups. For a cultivation's benchmark to be calculated, it must be compared against all other cultivations in the exact same segment that also have data available for that week. This ensures that you are only comparing your cultivation to a relevant peer group with similar characteristics and growing requirements. The benchmark value is simply the calculated average performance of this group.
For more information about tomato the define tomato segments please review THIS page
Summary performance
The Summary Percentiles section at the top of the page provides an immediate, high-level snapshot of your cultivations their performance relative to its benchmark.
How it works: We analyze the performance data for all cultivations within a benchmark peer group for a given week. This data is assumed to follow a normal distribution, with a defined mean and standard deviation. Your specific cultivation's performance is then plotted on this curve to determine its exact percentile. For example, a percentile of 90 would mean your cultivation is performing better than 90% of the cultivations in its peer group. This provides a single, easy-to-understand metric for overall performance.
Weighted Average: When you select multiple cultivations, the feature calculates a single, representative percentile for the entire group. This is done using a weighted average where the surface area of each individual cultivation is used as the weight. This ensures that larger, more significant cultivations have a greater impact on the final summary value, providing a more accurate reflection of your overall operation.
Historical View: The line at the bottom of this section is a valuable tool for tracking trends. It shows the evolution of the percentile over previous calendar weeks, allowing you to quickly visualize whether your performance is improving, declining, or remaining stable over time.
Benchmark Controls and Filters
A suite of controls and filters allows you to customize your analysis and create highly specific benchmark comparisons.
Controls
Calendar Week Selector: This tool allows you to navigate through different calendar weeks, enabling you to analyze performance trends over time.
Cultivation Selector: To maintain focus and relevance, this selector only allows you to choose from active cultivations.
Please note: as of now you can only select up to 10 cultivation in the Benchmarks page
Group By: This essential control changes the granularity of your view.
Cultivation: This is the default view, showing the individual performance of each selected cultivation.
Variety: This aggregates all selected cultivations of the same variety into a single performance value. Both the actual performance and the benchmark value are calculated as a weighted average, using the surface area of each individual cultivation as the weight. This is particularly useful for growers who want to see how a specific variety is performing as a whole across different cultivations.
Note on data availability: When aggregating by variety, we only include cultivations that have a complete data pair for a given metric and week (both the cultivation's performance and the benchmark value must be available). If a cultivation is missing either one of these values, it will be disregarded from the weighted average calculation. For example, if you have selected three cultivations of the same variety, but only one has both the performance and benchmark value available, the aggregation will be based solely on that one cultivation's data.
Filters
Metric selector: this allows you to choose to show or hide any of the aforementioned performance metrics
Filters: These filters allow you to narrow down the benchmark peer group to make your comparisons even more specific and representative.
Region: You can select one or more predefined regions, which are determined by the location of cultivations and global climate data. This filters the benchmark peer group to include only cultivations from similar geographical and climatic areas, which is critical for an apples-to-apples comparison. Please note: if no region is selected all regions will be taken into account.
For more information about regions are define please review THIS page
Starting Date: This filter allows you to narrow down the benchmark group to only include cultivations that started within a ± four-week window of your selected cultivation's start date. This is crucial because a cultivation's stage of growth has a significant impact on its performance metrics.
Benchmark Validity and Data Privacy
To ensure that benchmark data is always meaningful and to protect data privacy, a benchmark value will only be displayed if two specific conditions are met.
The benchmark peer group must contain a minimum of four cultivations. This constraint is in place because a benchmark with fewer than four data points is statistically insignificant and could lead to misleading conclusions. A larger sample size provides a more robust and reliable average for comparison.
The benchmark peer group must contain cultivations from a minimum of three distinct companies. This is a critical safeguard for data privacy. Without this rule, a user with enough knowledge about the industry could potentially reverse-engineer the performance of other individual cultivations or companies within a smaller peer group. By requiring a minimum of three companies, we ensure that the possibility of backward engineering is virtually impossible, thereby protecting the sensitive data of all participants.
If these two constraints are not satisfied, a benchmark will not be shown to prevent the display of inaccurate or privacy-sensitive information.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Why don't I see a metric value for my cultivation in a certain calendar week?
This occurs when no data was provided for the specific metric you are viewing for that particular week. For example, for the "Set Fruits Weekly" metric, a missing value likely means that either no plant measurements were performed, or the measurements did not record any newly set fruits.
Why is there no benchmark available within a certain calendar week?
A benchmark may not be available if it does not meet the minimum benchmark requirements for a valid peer group. As detailed in the Benchmark Validity and Data Privacy section, this happens if the peer group contains fewer than four cultivations or fewer than three distinct companies. To resolve this, you can try relaxing some of your filters to create a broader peer group.
Why are not all selected cultivations accounted for when I aggregate by variety?
When aggregating by variety, we only include cultivations that have a complete data pair, meaning both the cultivation's performance and the benchmark value must be available for a given metric and week. If a cultivation is missing either of these pieces of information, it is disregarded in the aggregation. For more details, please refer to the "Note on Data Availability" in the Page Controls and Filters section