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A significant number of England farmers have collected yield maps of combinable crops for more than three seasons. Examination of some of these sequences has revealed not only large variations in yield in a given season but also a lack of consistency in the pattern of variability from season to season within fields. In order to interpret such sequences, we applied a pattern recognition technique in order to identify subregions of the field that correspond to a limited number of distinct patterns of season‐to‐season yield variation. It is hypothesised that such subregions will correspond broadly to distinct factors, limiting on yield. A wider validation of the technique with yield data from >60 fields has now been undertaken, covering many soil types, patterns of spatial variability and weather patterns. Regionalization of fields has been compared with farmers' own perceptions and use of the approach to define field …