Crop Tour Day 2 Midday Update
Scouts Finding Better Corn, Soy Yields in North-Central, Western Indiana
WHITE COUNTY, Ind. (DTN) -- A scout team moving north from Fishers, Indiana, through north-central and western Indiana counties Tuesday morning found better averages for corn and soybeans on the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour than scouts saw farther east on Monday.
Samples collected in central Indiana averaged 162.5 bushels per acre in Howard and Miami counties, but the estimated yield from a field in Tipton County, Indiana, was 193 bpa.
A field sampled in Cass County had a larger average ear length of 7.7 inches, which calculated out to a potential yield of nearly 223 bpa.
Another eastern-leg scout team reported an average yield of 182 bpa from Indiana stops and pulled a corn sample from Vermillion County, Illinois, that calculated out at 235 bpa.
Still, not every sample looked like a field of dreams. A cornfield in White County, Indiana, had corn borer infestations attacking ears, and the soybean field across the road was facing problems with sudden death syndrome.
Overall, scouts on multiple routes in Indiana were measuring higher soybean plant populations and pod counts than what scouts found in Ohio Monday. Pod counts in a 3-foot-by-3-foot span were topping 1,500 pods, about 300-400 pods higher than samples measured Monday.
Crop tour veteran Bill Bayless, a farmer from West Mansfield, Ohio, said the early samples in central and west-central Indiana looked like solid potential crops.
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"The beans are looking really great in this area," Bayless said. "The corn looks good, but not maybe as great as the bean crop is. Overall, both of them together, the farmers will be really happy with their yields this fall."
Yield calculations on the crop tour take a total ear count from 30 feet of adjacent rows. Three ears are pulled from one row from stalks five, eight and 11. Those ears are measured for grain length and the number of kernels are averaged in each ear. Then, the calculations are divided by row space.
For instance, the field with 223 bpa yield had an ear count of 104 ears in two rows. The average ear length from the samples was 7.7 inches and the average kernel rows came to 16.7 (two ears had 16 kernels and one with 18 kernels). The math came to 104 x 0.5 = 52 x 7.7 grain length = 400.4 x 16.7 average kernels = 6,686/30-inch row width = 222.87 estimated bushels per acre.
WESTERN LEG FINDING VARIETY OF CONDITIONS
Scouts on the western leg of the tour continued to find a variety of conditions as they sampled fields across Nebraska Tuesday morning.
DTN's route covered some of the best productive regions of the state, and so far, corn yields were trending close to average. Soybean pod counts were slightly higher than average.
Over seven stops in east-central Nebraska, scouts calculated an average corn yield of 177.39 bpa compared to 172 bpa last year for the same area and a three-year average of 167.65 bpa.
Soybeans over the seven stops were found to average 1,499 pods in 3-foot-by-3-foot squares compared to 1,218.25 pods last year and a three-year average of 1,132.03.
Scouts noted that waterhemp was thick and western bean cutworms were feeding. They also noticed emergence was uneven, as ear set height was erratic.
Chris Clayton can be reached at chris.clayton@dtn.com
Pamela Smith can be reached at Pamela.smith@dtn.com
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Editor's note: You can follow the tour's progress by following @ChrisClaytonDTN for eastern leg updates, @PamSmithDTN for western leg updates or the hashtag #pftour16. Please remember that each tweet represents only what's seen on that particular car's route and doesn't necessarily represent the big picture.
Watch DTN Ag News this evening when the state average yields are updated.
To see photo albums by DTN staff on Facebook from the crop tour, go to:
Day 1 (West): http://bit.ly/…
Day 1 (East): http://bit.ly/…
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