The eastern leg of the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour saw a tale of different days unfold in the first half of the tour. Ty Higgins of the Ohio Ag Net is on the tour and he told HAT yield numbers Tuesday came up quite a bit compared with Monday’s southeastern Indiana leg. Day 2 central and western Indiana corn averages were often in the 150 bushels to the acre range.
Higgins also noted that corn quality was “great,” but stalks are not.
“Let’s just say that farmers better get their combines warmed up here in the next week or two because the stalk quality is not going to hold up and yields are going to be falling to the ground and not into the bin come harvest time,” he said. “There are a lot of fields here in west central Indiana where we did a couple of push tests. We tried ten stalks in same row and a lot of times 6, 7, 8 stalks of those ten snapped without any resistance back. So that stalk quality is going to be a huge issue after this dry, hot summer we’ve had in Indiana.”
The first two stops Tuesday were in Tipton and then Howard County and a 150 bpa number came out of both fields. Then the tour got a 180 yield from a Tippecanoe County field. But hail damage there is very severe.
“Hail damage is absolutely unbelievable. I’ve stood in a lot of corn fields, but the last one in Tippecanoe County was the worst one I’ve ever been in. You could see across the field quite a ways. It was beat up and I would imagine most of the fields were beat up by this same.”
And Higgins noted another storm moving in that brings high winds will easily blow over the corn with suspect stalk quality.
Listen for the full report:[audio:https://www.hoosieragtoday.com//wp-content/uploads//2012/08/Ty-Higgins-crop-tour-day-2-update.mp3|titles=Ty Higgins crop tour day 2 update]
As Pro Farmer wrapped up the Indiana portion of the tour they released a 113 bushels per acre estimate vs. the 3-year average of almost 156. Soybean pod count was close to the 3-year average of 1190. The 2012 Indiana average is 1033.
The Nebraska corn average is 131 bpa vs. at 3-year average of 157.