We’re starting our tour of the state of Nebraska. It’s day 6, July 1st, 2015. Just to give you a quick introduction to the state and some stats: it grows about 9 million acres of corn, 3.5 million soys, 2 million wheat. It’s the third largest corn producing state, so it’s a very important state – one of the top 5 corn producing states, but has a lot of irrigation. It’s also known as the husker state. In the last couple of weeks, crop conditions in the state – corn: very poor to poor, unchanged at 6%. Good to excellent jumped 1% to 70%. On the soys: unchanged, very poor to poor. And the good to excellent, unchanged also at 68%. And then the wheat: very poor to poor down 1% to 34 and good to excellent jumped 1% to 36%. We’re looking at another corn field, again the common theme in 2015, too much moisture has delayed some of the crops and they were planted late and they’re behind.
We’re travelling northeast on highway 30, we’re near Duncan, Nebraska and I just wanted to show this field. We’re at the three leaf stage, they’re quite short. It looks a little dry, but this is typical of Nebraska where you get the pivots in the irrigation, and so Nebraska typically can have some water that if the crops do get dry, if they fall behind, it’s not like some of the other states where they have to wait for mother nature for some rain. Not a bad looking field but it looks a little bit behind.
We’re travelling north on 81 near Norfolk, Nebraska. We’re in front of a soybean field. I wanted to show this field simply because it looks like a lot of the fields we’ve seen to date. You’ve got excess moisture – it’s taking its toll on a lot of soybean fields across the Midwest. It’s leading to disease pressure. If this continues it’s going to lead to – well, you can see the yellowing – which could eventually lead to potential drop in yield.
*Thanks Richard for letting us take your gator to get some awesome photos from the base of the pivot…*
We’re on day 6. We’re going to conclude the U.S. Crop Tour in the state of Nebraska. It’s July 1st and we’re in Cedar County, Nebraska. Folks, we’ve travelled from the south to the north, we went east and very south near Columbus, and then we travelled north. The south and northern Nebraska above Hartington really has had more of the moisture. This area here near Hartington has kind of missed some of it but it’s been ideal and I think we’ve seen more soybeans stressed in Nebraska than the corn. The corn looks pretty consistent – we haven’t seen that variability, that uneven corn that we saw in some of the other states that were in that flooding stage. So, Nebraska is important when it comes to corn. It’s the third largest, it’s looking good. It’s on par with an average year at best. If I was to rank Nebraska, probably going to rank it number 1 so far. It’s the best we’ve seen in all the other states that we’ve travelled through and I think the beans are – we’ve seen some yellowness in the beans travelling through Nebraska, but not as much as we’ve seen in some of the other states.
Again, I want to thank our sponsors: Pride Seeds, Tasco Dome, Penta Tillage and South West Ag Partners.