Minnesota Provides Crop Tour Corn Highlights

crop tour IL cornThis year, the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour saved the best for last, as scouts from both the eastern and western legs of the tour made their ways through Iowa and finished the week-long journey together in Rochester, Minnesota.

According to DuPont Pioneer Field Agronomist Josh Shofner, who covers southeast Minnesota, this year was a banner year for area corn and soybean fields.

“Overall the crop conditions look really good,” he said. “The crop went in early and after a couple of tough springs our growers were kind of itching to see a window and go and we had some windows there in early April and put in a lot of corn in the last part of April. As a result of some pretty nice weather through June, July and August so far, the corn crop looks really good across the area.”

Scouts did notices some areas where yield checks we on the lower side do to sample corn ears that were only 14 kernels around. Shofner says that during a critical time in ear development the weather gave the crop some challenges.

“It’s really variable across the southern half of the state. June and early July were really cloudy and we had not excessive rains but rains that were just steady. There were a lot of weeks where we picked up some one inch rains, not that it drowned us out or anything, but certainly that and the lack of solar radiation played a role in some of those things as well. But overall some of that stuff is a little bit pocket depending on where you are, but there is a big part of the state that has a pretty big crop.”

The numbers for Iowa and Minnesota were released on Thursday night. Pro Farmer estimates the corn crop in Iowa at 180.25 bushels to the acre and average soybean pod count in a 3 by 3 foot square of 1219.

Minnesota estimates are 190.87 bushels per acre and 1119.22 soybean pods in a 3 x 3 foot square.

Pro Farmer will release their final totals for this year’s crop tour Friday afternoon.

Source: Ty HigginsThursday tour wrapup

HAT coverage of the crop tour is sponsored by Seed Consultants.

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