Pro Farmer announces scaled-up plans for undertaking the difficult task of gauging this year’s corn and soybean crops.
With the majority of the heartland suffering from historic drought conditions, this year’s Midwest Crop Tour will provide a detailed analysis on the likely outcome for 2012’s corn and soybean harvest.
"Clearly, 2012 is shaping up to be an enormously painful year for most Midwest growers," says Chip Flory, Pro Farmer editor. "We’re getting wild variations in reports from our members – everything from an ‘OK crop,’ to ‘corn only 2 feet tall,’ to ‘field’s a total loss – plowed under.’ The task of Crop Tour will be to peg numbers to these conditions."
In its 19th year, the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour will deploy a team of more than 100 growers, industry experts and media reporters to scout about 2,000 fields in seven Midwestern states Aug. 20-23. A new feature this year will allow farmers to enter their own corn measurements into Pro Farmer’s Virtual Crop Tour tool. Available online during Crop Tour week, each participant will get a personalized yield estimate, expanding the Tour’s participation to corn growers nationwide.
"We’ve already seen the challenges that USDA is experiencing trying to measure this crop," Flory notes. "I’m fully expecting our scouts to face some of the same difficulties. Our measurements are critical, but it may actually be the qualitative observations of our scouts that will prove most important in determining what sort of crop is out there."
A summary of the Tour’s findings will be presented Aug. 23 at Ritchie Brothers auction facility near Owatonna, Minn. Taped on-location, Farm Journal’s "U.S. Farm Report" television program will air a detailed panel discussion Saturday, Aug. 25.
Each day’s official findings and results for Midwest Crop Tour will be published online at
www.Profarmer.com and www.AgWeb.com, and in the Aug. 24 issue of the Pro Farmer newsletter.
DuPont Pioneer has been the Tour’s lead sponsor since 2008. Other sponsors include SFP, RCIS, Chevy Truck, Farm Credit Services of America and Gavilon.
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