Pacific NW Eyes and Ears at Recent Midwest Crop Tour

Pacific Northwest Eyes and Ears at Recent Midwest Crop Tour

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

The annual ProFarmers Crop Tour happened a few weeks ago throughout the Midwest. Because of the historic drought adding interest, the tour had record attendance of 2,600 people.

Paul Neiffer participated in the tour as a volunteer scout. He is a partner in Clifton, Larson, Allen CPA firm and his focus is Agribusiness. In addition, he also writes a blog called FarmCPAToday.

This was Neiffer’s third crop tour and he participated in the Eastern leg of the tour -- which began in Columbus, Ohio, then moved through Indiana, Illinois and finished up in Southern Minnesota.

Neiffer says his expectations ahead of the tour was that he would see either a lot of bad or okay corn but no good corn while the tour. However, what he saw while scouting exceeded those low expectations.?

Neiffer: “We never had a field that was going to produce a zero. We had one that was going to produce 11 bushels was our projection. Then we had about five fields that were less than 100 bushels per acre but the other 50 to 60 samples were above 100 mostly in the the 130 to 180 range. There were about six or seven that were in the 200 to 220 range. So I was pleasantly surprised to see some actually some ver good corn out there. The drought definitely was pervasive, but there were a lot of areas that got good rains at the right time.”

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.