It’s the 32nd year that Pro Farmer’s Crop Tour will provide the industry with accurate late-season growing information about likely corn and soybean yields, and it’s starting as we speak this (Mon) morning.

“It is quite the journey seven states in four days and all told the mileage that we’ll put in will be about 32 or 33,000 miles across those seven states.” 

Western Leg Tour Director Chip Flory says the area covered represents around 70 percent of the Nation’s Corn and Soybean Production.

“We’ve got 12 routes that we’ve been running on the Eastern Leg of the tour, 10 routes that we’ve been running on the Western Leg of the tour.  Altogether we’ll have about 100 scouts out there on the road and we’ll be pulling about 1700 corn samples. We’ll pull the same number or close to it of soybean samples.” 

The approach is a bit different for each crop, according to Flory.

“We get into the cornfields, we take 3 sample ears and we open up the husks on those 3 sample ears and take some measurements of grain inches. We take the number of kernel rows around and, of course we’ll get an estimate or a count of the ear population out there. Once you’ve got those things, you can calculate an estimated yield.” 

As for soybeans, where so much of final yield is determined by factors yet to occur in the next 30-45 days he says they focus more on pods on a three by three area.

“Soybeans, you know, we get out there and we count the pods and we take a look in the canopy.  We’re trying to identify are there any disease issues or bug issues that we’ve got to be concerned about.” 

Each evening they provide a webinar to release the day’s results at 8 pm (EDT) at www.agweb.com.