Midwest Crop Tour – Last Day

On Thursday, we finished up the samples for the Midwest crop tour.  The Eastern leg took samples primarily in Eastern Iowa, while the Western Leg took samples in Southern Minnesota.  For all of the data collected on the tour, you can go to www.agweb.com and check out the results.

The biggest observation for today is this crop has the potential to be an all-time record crop.  Part of that is due to the number of acres that will be harvested, with the remainder due to the slightly unexpected yield potential for Minnesota and Iowa.  Most of the scouts thought today’s yields would be lower than they ended up.  However, this crop is so far behind normal schedule that we know with a normal freeze that a lot of this crop will not make their projected yield and an early frost will drop yield dramatically.  Another variable is how much rain and heat we get in the next few weeks.

The other big observation is the lack of soybeans out there.  Almost all states showed pod counts less than the three-year average and in some cases, it was lower than last year’s counts.  Now we know that mother nature still gave us a decent crop last year.  This year’s crop will not be good unless we get some rain and better weather.

I am now going out on a limb and guessing what I think the crop may be based upon what I saw this week.  USDA estimated 13.7 billion bushels last week.  I think that final number will be 13.25 billion plus or minus 150 million bushels.  Two large caveats.  If we have perfect weather and a very late frost in all states, then this crop may go over 14 billion.  If we have bad weather and an early frost, it will be under 13 billion.

We shall see and it will be interesting to see what Pro Farmer projects for the crop tomorrow.  For that number, you can log onto www.agweb.com at 1:30 pm CST to get their number.

Paul Neiffer, CPA