With corn and soybean harvest over, many no-till fields are green with cover crops or possibly covered with snow. Others have the soil protected by crop residue. (If your neighbors have freshly tilled bare ground you may be dreading what’s likely to come: muddy runoff and/or dust storms.)

Are you planning to just relax through the winter? Of course not — there’s always work on the farm! 

That work probably includes analyzing data recorded from the growing season and building on data from previous years. You may spend hours scouting your fields with maps in hand (paper or on a laptop). What needs to be changed or adjusted to set the stage for improvement in 2026?  

“In December, most work is being done at the desk, rather than in the field,” says Joe Nester, owner of Nester Ag in Bryan, Ohio. “Analyzing yield data and figuring out how 2025 yields relate to various input maps and previous years is key to improving net income.”

Defining Boundaries

Five or 10 years ago you had a thousand data points to analyze: now it’s millions. Nester has decades of experience consulting on tens of thousands of acres. 

“Where we used to make a recommendation for a field, now…