Our team is on the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour making stops in 13 counties across Ohio and Indiana. Oliver Sloup checks in with RFD-TV from the field.
*We will be making 13 stops today
Over the course of 4-days and 7 states, Scouts on the Pro Farmer Crop Tour will pull roughly 1,700 samples of each corn and soybeans. The data points we pull on our route are not necessarily indicative of the county or state as a whole. Pro Farmer will compile all of Monday’s findings for the State of Ohio and release that later this evening.
Check out our Pro Farmer Crop Tour
Oliver Sloup, Co-Founder and Vice President of Blue Line Futures will be on the eastern leg of this year’s Pro Farmer Crop Tour. He will be sending out live updates throughout the week as he and the other scouts travel through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and finishing up in Minnesota.
Stop #5 – Darke County, OH
Last year the USDA reported Drake County’s corn yield at 210.9 bushels per acres.
Stop #7 – Wayne County, IN
Last year the USDA reported Wayne County’s corn yield at 194.2 bushels per acres.Â
Stop #8 – Union County, IN
Yield Check: 198
Last year the USDA reported Union County’s corn yield at 221.8 bushels per acres.Â
Transcript: One Well, we mentioned the Pro Farmer crop tour. Let’s go to Union County, Ohio. That’s where we’ll find Oliver Sloup with blue line futures. What are you seeing? A lot of corn and a lot of soybeans. But I tell you what, it’s a beautiful day. Supposed to be a beautiful week. Last week, when we were out here, we hit some record high temperatures. So the cooler temperature certainly nice to see this morning, though, we’ve seen some pretty good corn. We’ve stopped in about four different counties. So far, we’ve got 13 on the books for today, and so far, things look pretty good. The crop tour covers seven states. Five of those are expected to be at record yields from the USDA, Ohio, being an exception to that, expected to be about 5% less than what we saw last year. However, what we’ve seen so far is right in line with some of the yields that USDA put out yesterday for Ohio. Now, the samples that we’re collecting not necessarily indicative of the overall County, but we get enough of these samples together, hopefully that gives us a better idea, and later this evening, Pro Farmer will put all that information out for the state of Ohio. Oliver, this isn’t your first rodeo or first tour. Why is it so important to get out in the field and see what you’re seeing? It’s important to get boots on the ground, get enough samples from the fields. I know a lot of firms and a lot of places are using satellite imagery and all that new technology, which is great and fantastic, but there’s something to be said for going to see it for yourself and getting outside of your backyard, even especially since our headquarters is in Chicago, it’s tough to see how things really look out there, and getting to talk to farmers that are on tour and stopping at some places as well. It’s just real great to see it for ourselves and get a better idea holistically how things look. Okay, and you’re on the eastern leg of the tour. There’s a Western leg as well. When do you all meet back up? We will meet together on Thursday up in Rochester, Minnesota. So we’re looking forward to that. Think, all in all, throughout this week, there’s probably about 100 scouts or so, as mentioned, going across seven different states, collecting about 1700 samples of corn and soybeans. So again, it’s about finding enough data points, putting that together to spit out some good data. Oliver slope is with blue line futures in Union County, Ohio, we’ll take a break from our row crops. We’ll come back and we’ll talk livestock futures. We’ll have both live and feeder cattle. We’ll hit hogs as well as market day report continues in a moment. Live up 22 let’s go back to Union County, Ohio. That’s where Oliver slope is on the Pro Farmer crop tour. Not really a chance to see much livestock while you’re out there, but I know you’re you’re keeping your finger on the pulse there. We’ve got a mobile command center set up in our vehicle. So yeah, we’ve got the screens pulled up, watching and working with clients in the cattle and lean hog markets, and nice to see a little bit of a recovery rally here to start this week’s trade, after just getting taken to the woodshed and Friday straight. And I know you and I have talked several times about just a lot of headline risk looming over this market, and potentially those those headlines keeping the would be buyers at bay, that being the managed money. And over the last several weeks, we have seen a trend of long liquidation from the funds. Funds now net short feeder cattle contracts and everything that long on live cattle shrunk to just around 40,000 contracts, which is a relatively neutral position. If you go back to last year, when we bottomed out, the funds were net short as much as about 10,000 contracts, and they were pretty darn close to even on live cattle. So nice to see some recovery rally here, but I’m not so sure that the lows are in just yet. Still see some year, but it’ll be interesting, and certainly, at least nice to see a little bit of green out there. Okay, so there’s two other stories I think that work in one, we’ve got the cash cattle side. How is that going to affect us this week? Well, a lot of people paying attention to the cash cattle, and just like last fall, when we really started to accelerate to the downside, a lot of the broad based fundamental aspects of the cattle were remained intact, and we’ve got this off a little bit. Maybe a little bit, but overall, a lot of the fundamental backdrop remains in place. My concern is, if you look further down the road, you start to see this economic data that we’ve been getting, and that starts to hit the consumer a little bit harder. I know everybody looks at interest rates and they want the results now. But that, I think, is just starting to trickle into the consumers, and that could potentially be a head one for demand and prices. Yeah, that’s Oliver Sloup. He’s in union. Hi. I’m Oliver Sloup, Vice President and co founder of blue line futures. Join me on my journey for this year’s Pro Farmer crop tour, August 19 to the 22nd I’ll be on the eastern leg, which starts in Ohio, goes through Indiana, Illinois into Iowa and then up to Minnesota. I’ll be sending out my normal daily grain market commentary as well as special updates from my findings on my route throughout each day. Sign up for these updates by filling out the form on this page, and we’ll send you one of the best looking koozies around, and I love corn. Koozie because who doesn’t love corn? Thank you, and I look forward to you joining me on my journey. You.