Pro Farmer Crop Tour: How Did Corn Yields Change So Drastically Since August 1st?

The disappointing start to Pro Farmer Crop Tour caught the attention of the markets. As scouts searched fields in South Dakota and Nebraska on the western portion of the tour Monday and Tuesday, scouts found a short crop that put a heavier load on findings in the east in order to reach USDA's most recent yield estimate of 175 bu. per acre projected in the August report.

On Friday, Pro Farmer released its U.S. crop production estimates, which showed a large drop to the U.S. corn yield and lower production. The numbers take into consideration information gathered during crop tour, but also crop maturity, acreage adjustments and historical differences between the tour and areas outside of those sampled during the tour.

 

pro farmer numbers

The East Didn't Make Up for Shortfalls in the West

What prompted Pro Farmer to drop its national corn yield estimate below 170 bu. per acre? The story seemed to be just how much damage the heat and drought did to the crop this year, even since August 1st.

“The West is usually the best; the West is a mess this year,” AgriTalk Host Chip Flory told the crowd in Rochester, Minn. Thursday night.

 “Well, the East was still a beast, it just wasn’t beastly enough,” Pro Farmer editor Brian Grete told the crowd in Rochester, Minn. Thursday night.

Grete says considering the severe crop shortfalls in portions of the West, Pro Farmer doesn't think the crop in the eastern Corn Belt is strong enough to make up for what's been lost in the western Corn Belt.

“You go in and he kind of hope that that it’ll be the case, but they lost too many bushels out west,” says Grete. “We'd have to have a phenomenal year in the eastern belt. And it's going to be a really good year, let's be honest. For Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, eastern Iowa, it's going to be a really good year. I don't think it's going to be good enough to offset what they lost in the western belt.”


Read More: Pro Farmer Crop Estimates Far Below USDA Expectations


Pro Farmer’s final production estimates take into account not only the Pro Farmer Crop Tour estimates, but also crop production potential in other areas of the country. Grete says even though the crop in the West seemed to catch more attention this year, there were also some surprises in the East.

“The biggest surprise, I think, was that the amount of tip back that we saw in Ohio and Indiana, and just the inconsistency,” says Grete. “I think I expected a little bit more out of that crop. We knew that were issues in the western side. I anticipated just a little bit better in the east. And Ohio is a tough one, because last year, it had such a stellar crop. It didn't really have an Ohio crop, it had kind of an Indiana crop. And I wanted to see an Indiana crop in Ohio again. I just didn't see it to the full degree.”

There were garden spots along the tour, including the monster crop that could come out of the northeastern portion of Iowa this year.

 “There was some 'wow factor' there,” says Grete. “And that's the only state that I can say - of the ones that I was in on the eastern leg - that had some 'wow factor.' And the 'wow factor,' I think, is above interstate 80, and more specifically, probably centered around highway 20.”

Drought and Heat Takes Toll on Western Corn Belt 

Western Iowa, however, was a different story. Heat and drought took a large bite out of the overall crop on the western side of the state. Flory said he was surprised with the unimpressive crop that scouts found in western Iowa this year, especially considering how strong western Iowa’s yields were in 2021, despite farmers facing drought.

“To see southwest Iowa fall off 10%, along with some reduction in west central Iowa and just a slight reduction in northwest Iowa from what wasn't really a great crop in in 2021 up there, I wasn't wowed by anything in western Iowa. But I was wowed by South Dakota and Nebraska. There's no question about that.”

 Flory says he was surprised by Nebraska and South Dakota, but not in a good way.  He says the crop has seen significant stress all summer, but it seems August caused the state's crops to take another production hit. He thinks Nebraska's farmers have lost yield, even since USDA took its last estimate on August 1.

“The crop has changed from August 1 to the end of August; it’s pretty remarkable, I think,” says Flory  “Several of the guys have said there was that three day period, I think it was August 5th, 6th and 7th, with 100 degrees days, and the wind blew about 30 mile an hour with low humidity. And you could see the corn crop in eastern Nebraska kind of give up at that point. Prior to that, the crop had to deal with some severe storms. The hail and replants in June on corn in Nebraska was pretty tough to see.”

Those tough conditions are the story of not just southeast South Dakota and Nebraska, but Kansas, Oklahoma, Southern Missouri, and Texas. Grete and Flory both point out the fringe acres have actually added to the national yield the past few years, but this year, crop losses and low yields mean they think the fringe acres pulled the national average corn yield down.

 The state-by-state breakdown from Pro Farmer also paints the picture of just how variable the crop is across the Midwest.
 

 

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