The 2010 Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour kicked off this morning, with crop scouts leaving Sioux Falls, S.D. on the western leg and Columbus, Ohio on the eastern leg.
After five stops in South Dakota on one route of the western leg, the best word to describe crop condition is wet.
“I don’t know if I ever remember seeing South Dakota this pondy,” says Neil Hadley, a farmer scout from Union, Iowa.
“In South Dakota, three or four years ago it was extremely dry, and this year it is extremely wet,” he says. “I’d call it the state of extremes.”
On the five stops, estimated corn yields ranged from 100.16 bu./acre to 156.87 bu./acre. Soil moisture in many of the fields were wet and lots of flooding and drowned-out spots at the edges of the fields.
In soybeans, plant stages included plants in the filling stage, but the leaves hadn’t started changing colors.
For pods in a 3-foot square ranged from 672 in Turner County, S.D. to 1,683 in Yankton County, S.D. In Cedar County, Neb., samples for pods in a 3-foot square included 950 and 1,344.
“Lot of variability in pod counts,” says Byron Wegner, a farmer scout from Ratcliff, Iowa. He says the soybeans looked healthy with no major disease pressure.
The eight routes on the western leg will convene in Grand Island, Neb. tonight where yield estimates for South Dakota and parts of Nebraska will be released.
