AgDay’s Betsy Jibben talks with a father and son team of scouts on the 2017 Farm Journal Midwest Crop Tour.

The 2017 Farm Journal Midwest Crop Tour kicked off in Dublin, Ohio, (a suburb of Columbus), with scouts sampling fields along 12 designated routes to Fishers, Indiana (a suburb o Indianapolis).

Is agriculture exempt from the permitting requirements of the Clean Water Act? Growers will have to wait a while longer for an answer to that question following a $1.1 million settlement in a landmark case this week.

Are farmers protected by the agricultural practices exemption of the Clean Water Act? That is the centerpiece of a court hearing getting underway in California.

Syngenta will sell corn and soybeans with Dow AgroSciences Enlist event following their agreement with Dow AgroSciences and M.S. Technologies.

After experiencing a strong rally over the past month, the grain markets came crashing down this week. “You could call it a virtual collapse of the markets,” says Jerry Gulke of the Gulke Group.

After the USDA’s June 30 acreage report last Friday, some people were questioning its accuracy. The March 30 prospective planting report had corn and soybeans within 500 thousand acres of each other, and many anticipated some of those corn acres moving to beans after April and May made for one of the wettest springs on record. But the June report widened that gap to 1.4 million acres, with corn currently estimated at 90.9 million acres and soybeans at 89.5 million acres.

Find out what you need to know about the data, the market’s reaction, and what you need to do after USDA’s release of the March 31 Prospective Plantings and quarterly Grain Stocks reports.

Acreage used for soy may exceed corn for first time since 1983.

Grain markets yawned Thursday after the release of the latest supply and demand report from the USDA.