The 2012 edition of the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour eastern leg started yesterday in Ohio and then made its way into Indiana. It moves to western Indiana Tuesday and on to Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, where it concludes Thursday.
At midday Monday Ty Higgins of the Ohio Ag Net told HAT the early stages of the tour are yielding very similar estimates to USDA’s August crop production report.
“Variation is the word of the day,” he said about Ohio. “We made seven stops and as far as the corn went we averaged 117.1 bushels to the acre. The one thing that Pro Farmer doesn’t do is make bushel guestimates on the soybean crop. They do a pod estimate in a 3 by 3 square in the field and that varied as well from around 300 pods all the way to 1241 in a Miami County field. So it has been varied as we expected but also right around what USDA said for Ohio at 117.1.”
Higgins said Indiana averages seemed to be near USDA’s 100 bpa statewide estimate issued earlier this month. But they found some very devastated corn as soon as they moved into the state.
“We started out in Randolph County and that has been the lowest we’ve seen so far for the corn crop at 50 and a half bushels. We moved on to Wayne County and that’s been the best so far at 136.80. All in all though in the five fields we’ve hit with Randolph, Wayne, Union, Franklin and Rush county we’re at about 80 bushels to the acre average. It looks like it just got hot right around that pollination stage and the ears just aren’t nearly filled up as they should be with that stressed crop.”
South Dakota corn yield estimates from day one of the crop tour are roughly half of the 3-year average for the same district at 74.26 bpa, and the soybean pod count also is about half of the 3-year average.
During the tour more than 100 scouts will survey corn and soybean fields every 15 to 20 miles across seven states representing 70-percent of the corn and soybean production in the U.S. Friday August 24th Pro Farmer will release its crop estimates at 3 PM Eastern time.[audio:https://www.hoosieragtoday.com//wp-content/uploads//2012/08/Ty-Higgins-Monday-afternoon-update.mp3|titles=Ty Higgins Monday afternoon update]