by Ben Nuelle
Scouts made their way from south to north in western Iowa Wednesday ending in Spencer. Chip Flory with Pro Farmer says it just didn?t feel like a record crop.
?When you are talking about making a record yield in a state you have to have all eight cylinders you don’t want to have on skip and miss and not doing anything. I felt like the west central district, which is traditionally a very high yielding district was missing a little bit this year, and it was.?
Flory says when they wrapped up in Iowa, yield estimates were down a little over 2 percent from a year ago. ?Now when we got into the northwest part of the state it was basically the same as last year. Just up .8% from last year on the corn yields, but the big game changer for the western part of the state was the southwest part of the state, up 15% from last year. That is a game changer.?
District 1 corn yields came in at 189 bushels per acre, District 4 at 181, and District 7 at 191.Flory says, ?In a very important part of the state that may be enough to offset that slight down tick in yield in the west central part of the state and add to a basically steady yield that we saw in the northwest part of the state.?
Soybean pod counts in 3×3 squares came in a 1,226 for District 1. District 4 had 1,265 and District 7 had 1,380. Scouts will hit Minnesota tomorrow ending in Rochester.
The tour is sponsored by DuPont Pioneer.
