Mid West Crop Tour – Tuesday
Today was a tale of two states. We started in Indianapolis area and went due west to the Illinois border taking six corn and bean samples in Indiana. We had two low samples in the 170 range, two in the 210 range and finally two in the 250 range for an average of 210. This is my fifth year of the tour and based on my memory (which could be failing according to my four sons), this was the most consistent good corn I have seen.
The soybean counts were not quite as consistent as yesterday, but the overall pod counts were in the 1240 range.
Now for Illinois. We first hit two counts in Edgar county and had our low yield of the day at 137. We then traveled through Coles, Douglas, Moultrie, Piatt, Macon, De Witt and finally Mc Lean counties. Based on chatter that we have heard or read in the press, etc. we expected to have several yields close to the 250 range. USDA is expecting Illinois to be at 188 statewide and we believe we were hitting some of the best ground in Illinois today. However, our final counts did not show this. Out of 9 counts, we had two under 150, two in the 175 range, two at 205, two around 225 and finally one good yield at 245 in Mc Lean county. Our final average was 193 which was 17 bushels lower than Indiana.
We must remember that this is only one route and the other 10 routes may yield substantially higher numbers than ours and the rest of Illinois tomorrow may be much higher than these counts, but for Illinois to hit 188, our route should have easily exceeded 200 bpa and certainly been higher than Indiana.
The soybean counts were very close to Indiana at 1250. However, in looking at the beans from the road, they would look great, but the pod counts were not as high as the “look”. But again beans are like my saying about wheat “Cats have 9 lives, but Wheat has 99 lives” and beans are a lot like this.
The one other thing that was very apparent is that Western Indiana and Eastern Illinois has a lot more moisture than Ohio and Eastern Indiana.
Paul Neiffer
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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