View from the Cab: Crop tours to football

By: Kent Casson

Crop tours all over, seed dinners just about every evening and high school football in the air – it must be late August in Central Illinois.

As the kids and Rebecca head back to school for another year, we certainly don’t have to worry about cooking dinner at our home for the foreseeable future as there are numerous customer appreciation events all the way through the first part of September. Those organizing these events usually know what farmers like: a cold drink and homestyle meals with dessert.

The family enjoys tagging along to these events as numerous other families are there and it is a way to gather in fellowship before we all get busy with fall harvest in the not-so-distant future.

Last week’s excitement in the ag world consisted of the annual Pro Farmer Crop Tour where scouts head out into Midwestern fields each day of the week in a different state to try and predict corn yields and count pods in soybean fields.

At the time of this writing, the Illinois results had not yet been released but we have an idea of what to expect this fall. The eastern Corn Belt appears to have decent crops while states out west could have poor yields. I even heard about one corn field out in the Dakotas with no ears of corn on the plants whatsoever.

In Ohio, Pro Farmer tour scouts came up with a corn yield of 174.17 bushels per acre with ear counts in a 60-foot row at 99.79, grain length 6.63 inches and kernel rows at 15.71. Soybean pod count in a 3x3 foot square was 1,131.64 and pod count in three feet was 457.22.

South Dakota’s numbers weren’t so good, with a corn yield of 118.45 bushels per acre with ear counts in a 60-foot row at 80.76, grain length at 5.25 inches and kernel rows of 15.76. The soybean pod count in a 3x3 foot square was 871.40 with pod count in three feet at 631.53.

These crop tours will begin winding down so USDA can actually have some “boots on the ground” measurements of crop potential in September when the combines start rolling throughout the region.

The harvest Friday nights are almost here with another high school football season. Nothing is better than watching your favorite high school team under the lights with harvesters and trucks in the distance bringing in the crops. I’ll be leaving the farm fields for the football fields each Friday evening through October as we cover Prairie Central football on Fairbury News.