Mid-West Crop Tour Recap

My part of the Midwest Crop Tour started in Columbus, Ohio early Monday morning and finished up at the Iowa/Minnesota far eastern border around noon on Thursday.  We traveled through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and into Minnesota.

The samples that our team took each day on route seemed to be a little bit better than samples taken by other scout teams.  We never took a sample that had a zero, but almost every other team did.  Our lowest sample was on the last day with 11 bushels per acre and our highest sample was about 220.

Soybean pod counts were down about 20% or more compared to last year in every state.  Also, it appears that most of the beans are much further ahead of other years and even in rains show up, I am not sure how much extra yield the rains will produce in the beans.

Pro Farmer ended up with an estimated corn yield of about 120 bushels per acre (I told numerous people Thursday night I was predicting 119.77, so I was not too far off) and a bean yield of about 35 bushels per acre.  Both of these numbers are below the USDA but our tour is about two-three weeks after their samples and they will be updating theirs soon.

All-in-all, I saw about what I expected.  There will be no surprise on the upside for either corn or beans and I think the downside is about where it is now.  I know we are looking at a tropical storm that will hit parts of the country and am not sure how this will affect the market, but I would expect volatility will be in place for several months to come.

Paul Neiffer, CPA