CONTEXT The legacy effect of a previous crop on a subsequent crop in rotation is a valuable and often underutilized ecosystem service which can provide benefits when designing cropping systems, especially in the case of cereal-based land use.

OBJECTIVE To support future diversification of crop sequencing in Finland, this study was carried out with the aims to identify the variation in the pre-crop values of relevant crop combinations in farmers' fields in Finland, depending on the weather and farm conditions.

METHODS We used a method developed to estimate on-farm realized pre-crop value from Sentinel − 2 images available annually for 120,174–711,828 field parcels in Finland during 2016–2020 (the total number of observations was >1,818,000).

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Both the weather and farming conditions explained the variation in the pre-crop values, which might range from positive to negative. For example, a higher mean temperature and fewer rainy days during the growing season of a previous crop often reduced the legacy effects of crop sequencing, however, this was dependent on the crop choices. A higher number of rainy days and elevated temperatures during the subsequent crop's season often increased the pre-crop value, while prolonged droughts in either of the growing seasons tended to reduce these. The farmers' current land use did not support the realization of pre-crop value – especially in the case of potential benefits provided by grasslands for croplands.

SIGNIFICANCE This study highlights the challenges that weather variation and complexity of the production systems may cause for a farmer when aiming to identify the impacts of crop sequencing on yields, ecosystem services, and farm economy. Hence, there is an evident need to develop a decision support system that recognizes regional farming systems, available crop choices, crop management, weather conditions, and the farmers' rationale concerning decision making.