Welcome to day 3 of the US Corn Belt Crop Tour, we’re in the state of Illinois. It’s Sunday June 28th, it’s a sunny day, so far no rain. Just to give you a quick introduction, first and foremost I want to thank our sponsors Tasco Dome, Pride Seeds, Penta Tillage and South West Ag Partners. In the last USDA Crop Progress Report, USDA did lower crop conditions sharply, so soys in the very poor to poor category went from 5 to 14%, good to excellent 71 to 58%, that’s a big drop. Corn, 5 to 7 very poor to poor, and in good to excellent 78 to 70%. That 70% still pretty good versus the long term average. Soft red winter wheat 10 to 18% very poor to poor, and good to excellent from 55 to 44%. Now as we’ve traveled west, towards Effingham, now we’re going south west on Highway 37 near Farina we haven’t seen the moisture stress we saw in Indiana yesterday, in that South Central/Northern Indiana. I have never seen so much water in corn and soy fields. In fact, Chris Hurt from the University of Purdue is suggesting that farmers will lose half of their crops there. Those crops just won’t recover from all that moisture. We just got rivers and lakes everywhere and it’s going to cost those farmers as much as $300 million. Seeing a little bit of stress even in this field here, a little bit of the yellow corn, that’s from too much moisture but not as much as in the state of Indiana. It’s looking better in the state of Illinois.
We’re now in front of a soybean field, we’re southwest on highway 37 near Farina, Illinois and you can see that this field is a little stressed by moisture. We’re not seeing as much of this as we saw yesterday in Indiana. Looks like it's probably planted a little bit later than normal, and then we can see the corn in the distance there not looking to hot there either. They are expected to have more rain over the next 5 to 7 days and a lot of these crops cannot take much more moisture here. We are going to need some heat in order to recover from this.
We’re traveling west on Highway 15 near Nashville, Illinois and we are in front of a wheat field here that is being harvested and we just met up with the farmer. Unfortunately he needed to leave but he is suggesting that the yields here are pretty good. Not seeing much disease pressure. Considering all the moisture, it’s a really good wheat crop. In fact, from our tour so far, in about two and a half states, the wheat probably looks the best. Now the market’s been concerned about too much moisture, disease, quality, downgrades, that sort of thing, 20 parts per million. We’re not necessarily seeing it here, but moisture in this area has caused a lot of issues with all of the crops.
We’re in front of a soybean field near Nashville, Illinois, west on Highway 15. You can see some unevenness in this field. The farmer told us this crop was planted early May, but the moisture kinda stalled the growth and these beans should be at least a foot higher.
It was a sunny day traveling through the state of Illinois this morning, but guess what, the rains back. You can see it in the background, there is a major storm behind us. We’re traveling north on highway 67 near Jerseyville. This corn although it looks healthy it’s behind. Across the road here we’ve got another field that’s almost about to tassle so, it’s just a difference of planting dates. I’m assuming again, moisture playing a role with this corn crop.
We’re traveling north on highway 106, south of Winchester, Illinois and we found some more tasseled corn and this time we’ve got some ears; some smaller ears. Corn is not that tall but despite all of the moisture that they have been talking about in this area, these crops were planted early so you’ve got really good looking corn.
We’re still traveling north on highway 106, just south of Winchester and these are some of the best soybeans I have seen in the three states we’ve traveled through thus far. Despite all that moisture, and you can see in the background there is some stress with moisture, but it looks like these beans were planted early.
We are going to end our state of Indiana, day 3 video. We are in McComb county Indiana. We have traveled kind of southwest then we came up north, went to Roseville, Griggsville, and now McComb County. If I was to rank the states, we have seen 3 states so far, Illinois looks the best. It has a lot more corn tasseled than Indiana or Ohio. Bottom line, the state of Illinois 2 to 3 weeks ago was looking really good; perfect conditions. All of a sudden the moisture came. Too much moisture and we’ve shaved the top end. Even the good looking corn, there is a lot of variability, inconsistency, unevenness, and so you’ve shaved the top end of that yield. So, we continually see too much moisture being a factor this year despite Illinois looking better than Indiana and Ohio.