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Crop Tour numbers are shocking, but not surprising

Day one of the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour finished yesterday with not a lot of surprises.  Brian Grete leads the Eastern Leg and says expectations weren’t high going into the first day.  Even though the numbers are shocking, he says it is pretty much what they had expected.  “Everyone knew it was a bad situation,” he says.  “Obviously there has been moisture and drought stress combined with heat stress throughout the growing season.”  He notes that the recent rainfalls simply didn’t make it in enough time to help this year’s crop.

At the end of the day Grete says they saw dramatic differences from 2011.  “On the corn side of things came in with an average yield of 110.5 bpa in Ohio,” he says.  “That’s down 29.3 percent from what we found a year ago.” In soybeans – Grete notes the numbers weren’t much better.  “We don’t calculate a yield on tour,” he says.  “What we do is calculate pods in a 3’X3’ square and that number for Ohio came in at 1,033.72 a decline of 17.5percent from 2011.”

The western leg of the tour figured South Dakota’s corn yield at 74 bpa and had soybean podcount at 585 in a 3 x 3 square.  Both figures are down significantly from 2011.

Estimates for Indiana’s corn and soybean crops will be available following this evening’s meeting in Bloomington, Ill.