The Crop Tour – Day 4
Today, we have a very long drive ahead of us as we traveled from Spenser, Iowa, headed north into Minnesota. We then headed west almost to the South Dakota border. We then turned north and started to do our counts in those four counties along the border. At Canby, we then turned south and east and worked our way back to Interstate 90. All in all, we put on about 350 miles today.
Corn yields were all over the map and we saw a lot of lodging that will show up at harvest. That will not be fun to combine this year.
We got into Austin, Minnesota tonight and had our final meeting with the local farmers and met up with the eastern crop tour participants. The estimated yields were given at the meeting and the early call on Minnesota was a .08% increase in yield. The big surprise was an estimated 6% plus drop in Iowa corn yields. There are a lot of soybeans out there, however, the crop is much further along this year than last and so many of the pods last year were still blooming and not counted.
This was my first crop tour and I really enjoyed it. It is hard work driving that much and making that many stops, but very rewarding. I would higher encourage any of my readers to do it at least once. You meet a lot of interesting people, not just farmers, but traders, USDA personnel and many others involved in ag.
I look forward to doing it again and we will see what the final numbers look like tomorrow.
Remember to check out the progress at www.agweb.com.
Paul Neiffer is a certified public accountant and business advisor specializing in income taxation, accounting services, and succession planning for farmers and agribusiness processors. Paul is a principal with CliftonLarsonAllen in Walla Walla, Washington, as well as a regular speaker at national conferences and contributor at agweb.com. Raised on a farm in central Washington, he has been immersed in the ag industry his entire life, including the last 30 years professionally. Paul and his wife purchase an 180 acre ranch in 2016 and enjoy keeping it full of animals.
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