Tour indicates strong yields

BLOOMINGTON – Participants in this year’s Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour noticed some impressive corn yields when visiting a handful of Central Illinois counties Tuesday.

One of the tour’s 12 routes, which visited Vermillion, Iroquois, Livingston, Ford and McLean counties, had an average yield of 202.4 bushels per acre.

“We saw some really good corn. We anticipated we would see that,” said Brian Grady, editor of the Pro Farmer newsletter and eastern tour director.

Crop scouts observed poor yields in parts of Ohio before the yields increased as they made their way west. Yields jumped by the time the tour entered western Indiana and the numbers were better yet when it got into eastern Illinois.

After the Tuesday stop in Bloomington, the Midwest Crop Tour heads to western Illinois and into eastern Iowa. A brief stop in Iowa City occurs before the event wraps up Thursday and the final yield estimates are released Friday afternoon.

The Indiana yield estimate came in at 173.42 from 163 samples, which is up 21.3 percent from what the tour found in the state last year. Soybean pod numbers in a three-foot row were up by almost 19 percent. Nebraska’s yield was 158.6, down four percent from the previous year, although the soybean pods were up 5.6 percent in that state.