With all the Ohio data in the books, today’s focus on the eastern leg of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour is on Indiana. The USDA is expecting a record yield, what are the scouts seeing?
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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.
Transcript: In Tennessee. Good morning. I’m Suzanne Alexander Scott Shelley at the desk with a check of the markets. In a bit, it is day two of the 32nd annual Pro Farmer crop tour. It is now underway, and scouts made their way across South Dakota and Ohio yesterday, where corn yield estimates came in slightly lower than last year. Oliver Sloup, with blue line futures, joins us now from the field. Oliver, thanks for joining us. And as I said before we went to camera, boy, what a day it looks like you are having and that crop behind you looks gorgeous. Things look really good. The weather has been perfect, certainly a lot better than what we had last year, where we had heat index upwards of 115 degrees. Today, we’re right on the border of Indiana, Illinois. It’s probably 70 degrees, good sunshine, so it feels great. But you mentioned that corn yield in Ohio yesterday coming in slightly below what we saw last year. But all in all, I think the fact that we were close to on par was a really good takeaway, considering the USDA was expecting to see a 5% drop, or about 10 bushels per acre, less than last year. So coming in in line with what the crop tour pulled, I think is a silver lining. Now, the opposite is taking place today. Indiana is supposed to have a record yield. The USDA has an estimate of 207 bushels per acre. Last year was 202 bushels per acre, but what we’ve pulled on our six to seven counties so far, which goes through northern Indiana, has been somewhat disappointing, certainly no drought stress and good moisture, but in some areas, maybe a little bit too much moisture. Any surprises that you’re seeing? I know, you know, obviously there’s always some some pest issues. Are you seeing anything like that at all? We haven’t really seen any big pest issues. We’ve seen some tar spots. Most of that was yesterday. Haven’t seen much of that today. I think the big surprise is just kind of what we’re seeing in Indiana, the smaller ear counts and Colonel counts that we’re getting through our samples again through northern Indiana. That’s not necessarily going to be representative of the whole state, but it will be interesting to see what the other guys in the other routes come out with later this evening when Pro Farmer releases that full set of data points. Absolutely, I know this, of course, as we mentioned, 32 years this is going on. A little idea maybe you can explain, for people who may not know are tuning in right now, how you guys sample and how you go about getting into those fields, and what you’re exactly looking at. That’s a great question, because I know there’s a lot of people out there on social media that say these guys are just picking the best fields out there. That’s simply not the case. We have a route that goes through the counties, and we pick the fields just kind of at random. And so when we get to the fields, we walk 35 paces past the end rows. We measure the row width, and then from there, we put down a rope on a stock that’s 30 feet long. We count the ears on that 30 foot stretch. It’s usually around 50. So you count the ears on both rows of that and then you pull ears number five, eight and 11. Once you pull those ears, we come back to the truck, we measure that length, the kernel around, and we put all that data together to give us somewhat of a yield check. And again, that yield check isn’t going to be representative of a hardcore yield estimate for that specific field. But the idea is, you get 100 scouts out there and 1700 samples over the course of a week, you can start to narrow that down a little bit. Yeah, definitely get a pretty good idea of what is going to be. Thank you, Oliver, as always, for joining us four days of scouting hard work. So if you get some rest tonight. Appreciate you joining us. Oliver Sloup with blue line future. 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. Thank.