(FARGO, ND)– Earlier this week, USDA projected a record national average corn and soybean yield in its August reports. Corn at 183.1 bushels per acre and soybeans at 53.2 bushels per acre were the latest projections. But are those numbers actually out there?
On the cusp of multiple crop tours over the next few weeks, Professional Ag Marketing and their team led by Mike Minor wrapped up their 9th annual Midwest crop tour last week. And Minor, speaking on Tuesday’s episode of Agriculture of America, shared what he found.
“Well, I’ll put it this way. So like we, we traveled 2,500 miles. We went through Northwest Iowa, Eastern Nebraska, all the way over to Ohio through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and then back through the North side,” says Minor. “And I, good to excellent wise, if I had to rate crop ratings from day one until the last stop, I didn’t see a field that wasn’t good to excellent. The whole Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, everything was fantastic condition wise. It was very, very good all the way across the board.”
Minor did indicated some parts of Nebraska had hailed out fields while Ohio possibly had some leaching problems and fields being planted a month apart due to rainfall.
When it comes to areas that saw heavy flooding this spring like Northwest Iowa, Minor says “I could spend an entire radio show just talking about what I think Northwest Iowa’s situation is, but I thought when it came to condition wise, it was fantastic. Like, best ever. I’ve done this nine years where the crops are and where the crops matter. They are fantastic. Now, you have a safe yield and you have the, a record yield, right? And you’ve got the, the state yields that you can safely put in, like, okay, is Iowa really a record? Maybe not because of Northwest Iowa, but pretty darn close, like 203, not the 209 the USDA came out with. Now, could I see him with a good finish doing 209? Totally. 210, you can easily hit that mark.”
As far as record yield potential in other areas of the Midwest, he says “Now, you go through, like, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. If you told me all of those are record, I wouldn’t even scoff at you. I’d say, yeah, they looked perfect. I mean, it’s gonna be hard to pull you off of that. Now, on the other hand, was Illinois a record by, like, 11 bushels, but 225? Now, I don’t know how good good is when we start talking about it like that, right? But I know one thing that Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, I mean, fantastic crops. It’s hard to argue with whatever number the USDA comes up with there.”
View their full results here: https://professionalagmarketing.com/croptour
You can listen to the full conversation from Tuesday’s AOA program in Segment One and also a separate, extended conversation on the Market Talk YouTube channel from Tuesday, both linked below: