Weather became a primary factor on day two of the 2026 Pro Farmer Crop Tour. While the Eastern leg navigated the aftermath of last week’s historic rainfall in Indiana, real-time storms in Nebraska delayed scouts’ early morning schedule on the western leg.
Indiana Leaves Room To Be Impressed
Indiana lived through a one-in-a-thousand-year rainfall event last week, leaving fields flash-flooded, saturated and packed with uncertainty about what all that water would mean for yield. Crop Tour scouts fanned out expecting the worst — mud, delayed sampling and a crop that looked like it had been set back.
But as the teams rolled into fields on Tuesday, the first thing many of them noticed was that conditions were not quite as disastrous as they’d feared.
“We prepared for the mud and the mess, but we didn’t get a lot of that today — so we were able to actually see the crop clearly,” says Lane Akre with Pro Farmer.
The relatively clean fields keep the pressure on a high-stakes projection. In its Aug. 12 Crop Production report, USDA estimated Indiana’s average corn yield at 206 bu. per acre (up from 204 bu. in 2025), with soybeans pegged at 62 bu. per acre.
Even so, the biggest surprise didn’t show up in the ground — it showed up in the plants themselves: maturity. Scouts repeatedly described corn that wasn’t progressing the way they expected for the time of year.
“Honestly, it surprised me — things were denting, but the crop still didn’t feel as far along as we thought it would be,” says Oliver Sloup with Blue Line Futures. “As we moved west, it seemed like every stop got more interesting in terms of maturity.”
From there, the story became more about what’s missing than what’s present. In the sample counts, scouts saw signs that yield components, especially ear counts, weren’t holding up like last year.
“The eastern part is going to be such a drag,” Akre says. “We’ve seen it tick a little higher farther west, but not enough to erase what we’re seeing in the east.”
Sloup framed it as a “middle-of-the-road” year — where some areas look better than expected, others look rough, but nothing matches the total disaster scenario some people feared.
“It feels like a Goldilocks year — pretty good in spots, poor in spots, but not completely a disaster across the board,” he says.
Soybeans, however, were a more complicated read. Scouts pointed to promising areas, especially fields that handled early planting and then absorbed rainfall without becoming completely waterlogged.
“We saw some pretty good-looking beans today, and a lot of them handled the precipitation better than you’d expect,” Akre says. “If the drier stretch holds, there’s still a chance this crop can finish strong.”
Still, the rain left obvious pockets of stress. Scouts reported standing water in some areas, with some fields showing heavy damage risk, particularly in river bottoms and low-lying ground.
“We drove by standing water and saw some bean areas that were way more under water than people were accounting for,” Akre says. “Where that water pooled, you’re talking about real zeros risk — zeros are a huge drag on any state.”
Disease pressure also entered the conversation. Scouts described wet conditions that could bring white mold concerns, especially if the forecast didn’t turn decisively drier. They report wind–and no more rain–could help dry things out.
They also highlighted a soybean complication that isn’t always captured well in ratings: pod variability. In some fields, scouts saw wide divergence in pod size and count — sometimes even on the same plant — making estimates harder and raising uncertainty about what the final yield will be.
Even with those challenges, scouts found moments that gave them pause — in a good way. Some areas that went from relatively dry to very wet still looked like the soil had absorbed the rainfall rather than letting it all wash away.
Can Reality Hold Onto Potential?
By day’s end, the tour shifted from “what did the rain do?” to “what happens next?” because the crop’s current condition is only one snapshot, and from here to harvest, weather and timing will determine how much of that potential turns into yield. While scouts say the corn looks underwhelming, they are still optimistic about soybeans, if the forecast cooperates.
Moving in to day three, scouts on the eastern leg are working to answer the same question everyone on tour is really asking: How much of this year is already written — and how much can still be finished?
Nebraska Scouts Sidelined By Early Storms, But Crops Tell A Varied Story
On the Western leg of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour, scouts started the day dealing with classic Nebraska weather — storms around Grand Island early on, then skies clearing by mid-morning. Even after the rain moved through, the teams kept scouting because conditions were clearly not uniform across the state.
When it came to corn, the on-the-ground takeaway was that yields are trending lower than 2025 — mainly because dryland acres are pulling the statewide average down.
That matches the downward trend of USDA’s numbers, which pegged Nebraska’s corn yield at 183 bu. per acre in August — an 11-bu. drop from last year’s 194-bu. average.
“We are seeing a little more tipback than we’ve seen the last couple of years,” says Brent Judisch, Pro Farmer Crop consultant and Crop Tour scout.
He ties the yield impact directly to stress at pollination, and he connected it to nights that stayed warmer than usual. That stress showed up on corn yield checks in practical terms, with a yield loss range from 8% to 12%.
Disease Has Had Minimal Impact
It’s not disease knocking down yields this year, and Judisch reports seeing no southern rust at all.
Still, the biggest difference between years isn’t irrigated corn — it was the variability in dryland. Judisch explains it this way: “Last year we had great dryland crops, almost the same as irrigated … this year there’s a little more variability,” then summarized the statewide effect bluntly: “I attribute that to the dryland acres are a little bit off from last year.”
On soybeans, irrigated pod counts were described as roughly normal.
One scout gave a concrete baseline: “You’re going to average 1,600 pods. Pretty normal,” and notes pod structures look like typical Nebraska bean development in the fields they sampled.
But hitting that “normal” mark on dryland will be a uphill battle to meet USDA’s August yield forecast of 57 bu. per acre (down from 65.5 bu. in 2025). But drought-impacted areas told a different story.
“We are deficit in July and August — 40% to 50%,” Judisch says.
He also emphasizes that drier conditions changed the bean outcome with pod counts down.
At the same time, the dry pattern helped reduce pressure from insects and disease.
Finally, there’s a maturity/time constraint underlying everything — especially on corn.
Overall, scouts repeatedly described this as a still-developing picture rather than a final answer, but the early consensus is clear: Dryland performance is the swing factor, and it’s why both corn and soybeans are likely to come in below 2025.
