by Jenna Hoffman, AgWeb.com
The Pro Farmer Crop Tour commenced on Thursday, with scouts rallying in Rochester, Minn., to share images of fields they ranked as some of the worst they’d seen all week.
Here’s what scouts found on their final stretch of the tour.
Eastern leg: Iowa City, Iowa to Rochester Minn.
Variability was the theme on the eastern leg on Thursday, as Peter Meyer of S&P Global says Iowa’s corn crop is the patchiest he’s seen in his 17 years on Crop Tour.
“This crop didn’t get enough moisture and ran out of energy. It’s certainly not a disaster, but when you look at the ears and consider the potential, it could have been a monster crop,” Meyers says.
The same variability concerns only grew in soybeans as scouts made their way north. Some said they struggled to determine whether the crop was dying or drying out.
“You’ll come up on a particular field with 50% a dried yellow color. I really don’t know if it’s sudden death syndrome, or if it’s their time to go,” Meyer says. “We’re sitting here with two to three days of 103° heat index. Soybeans are an August crop, so this crop will not finish very well.”
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