Macadamia crop forecasting 2023-2025 (MC22001)
What's it all about?
This investment is responsible for producing climate-adjusted crop forecasts for the macadamia industry each year from 2023 to 2025, along with longer-term forecasts out to 10 years for expected production amounts.
Access to yearly and future-looking forecasts allows for improved decision-making by macadamia growers and the wider industry. As the macadamia industry continues to expand, reliable crop forecasts are needed for maintaining market confidence and price stability, the scheduling of processing, and infrastructure planning for future increases in production.
The latest forecasted figures are available through the Australian Macadamia Society.
Targeted data were successfully sourced and analysed. The project team collated historical production on a regional basis, and relevant meteorological variables were obtained from the Met Bureau. The overall climate for 2022 (which influences the 2023 crop) was evaluated separately for each region. In parallel, an industry-wide survey of flower ratings was collated by the macadamia benchmarking team, and early-season nut sizes measured.
Both these datasets did not identify any potential problems for the 2023 crop. Forecasts were developed using both ‘more traditional’ statistical models (as have been successfully adopted in past – the average error for the last three years is 2.9 per cent), along with some of the more promising machine-learning algorithms.
The 2023 crop forecast for the 2023 is available on the Australian Macadamia Society website.
This project is a strategic levy investment in the Hort Innovation Macadamia Fund.