Introduction#

Yield forecasting and estimation is key to almost all food security and agricultural analysis, including ensuring market transparency, trade decisions, triggering anticipatory actions in the face of impending shortfalls, informing farmer best practices, insurance payouts, designing effective adaptation, and mitigation strategies in the face of a warming climate. Provision of insurance services can ensure that all farmers, especially the least privileged, are buffered from the vagaries of nature. For an optimally functioning insurance marketplace, it is critical to provide accurate and explainable forecasts of pre-harvest losses, and ensure that the same information is available at the same time to all the actors in this situation: the farmers, the policy makers and the insurance companies (Kramer et al., 2021).