16 state crop condition report

Narrator: And it all comes down to this. 2 on, 2 out, bottom of the 9th. The Farmers lead by 1.

Chris: Full count, here comes the play at the plate, and it's the Ag View Pitch! Welcome everybody again to another Ag View Pitch, and today we've got Shay and myself, Chris Barron. And, and I guess Shay, what I want to start out with is we're getting ready for a podcast here that's kind of on steroids from what we've done before. We've done a lot of homework here. We've gathered a lot of information state by state to get a bunch of agronomic information out to everybody. So what's your thought on what we're getting lined up here?

Narrator: Well, I think, like you said, Chris, phenomenal amount of information. And in advance, want to thank everybody that not only provided us feedback— that's about 40 to 70% of the information that we have here— and then the rest of it is stuff that we've actually seen in our travels here over the last 2 weeks, not only driving through, but actually getting out in the field, seeing the physical conditions of things and how they are. So I'm really excited for the information we're going to be sharing with you here today.

Chris: Yeah, it sounds good. Well, what are we going to call this?

Narrator: We call it the Sweet 16. We got 16 crops or 16 states here that we're going to be talking about crop conditions. And, you know, like I said, I think there's going to be some tremendous value for those listening.

Chris: Yeah. So let's go ahead and get started, I guess. I think we've got things kind of broke out into 4 segments. We've got this first segment here, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas. But let's get started on North Dakota. What we did was we spent some time visiting with growers that we work with in each of these states. And as you said, Shay, too, we've kind of driven through a bunch of these areas as well too, but wanted to just get some perspective out to everybody. A lot of people, we all see our backyards, and so it's really important to get some perspective. So starting out in North Dakota, basically what we're hearing there is a lot of the same things we're hearing in other areas, but really late getting started planting, a fair amount of prevent plant up there.

The other thing that I think was brought up too was that with the corn in the situations they're in right now, they're way behind schedule. About 15% of the corn is tasseled right now. And, you know, I said, well, tell me a little bit about, you know, if it was excellent, good, fair, poor, how would you rank the crop? You know, and basically the North Dakota contacts I've talked to are essentially telling me they wouldn't rank anything in the excellent category at all. But I think a lot of that has to do with, it's just, it's so late, it's so far behind schedule. Um, you know, basically what I, I assessed was about 40% probably in that good category, about 30% in the fair category, and about 30% in the poor category. And a lot of that has to do with just all the rain they've had. Um, you know, trying to get stuff planted in good conditions just was not really possible.

So a lot of compaction and that kind of thing. And then, you know, the other thing we got to with a lot of these guys is we talked about, you know, the last month, you know, in July, what'd you get for rainfall? And it's kind of interesting in North Dakota, Shay, they had, you know, a lot of rain. In fact, in the first 20 days in the area where I was talking to Zane, this producer that's north, what would he be, northwest of Fargo. They had almost 20 inches in the first 20 days of the month. And so they've, they've really been fighting a lot of water, but now it's turning dry. And so consequently, the same thing we're hearing in other areas that, you know, if it doesn't keep raining, they're going to be in trouble too. So, you know, they've had too much rain, and if it shuts off, that's not going to be good either.

Narrator: So, and they had a significant amount of prevent plant too. Some producers, 30 to 40% of their acres went prevent plant, which isn't necessarily out of the norm with the variability that they see there in the Dakotas, but it just goes to show that this was a very widespread issue.

Chris: Right. And we don't want to overstate the bad either because, you know, in talking to some of the growers up towards Minot and up in that direction, as you go further north in the state, there are some areas where the crops do look really good and they haven't had too much excess rain. You know, nothing's been perfect anywhere this year. We've seen a ton of variability, but there are some good areas. To kind of like all the other states. So any other thing I should be hitting on North Dakota? I think that covers that one. Yeah, I think that's good. South Dakota, we visited with a couple of different growers there because really in South Dakota there's two segments. You've got the northeast corner, which actually from what we're hearing looks pretty good. They got some here recent rains here lately. You know, they're 15 to 20 days behind schedule as far as crop maturity goes.

As you're going to hear a theme here going on moving forward, soybeans is really the concern. They're going to need a lot of rain in August to get the crop developed like they want to see it developed. You know, they've been getting rains though in, you know, the northeast corner of South Dakota, which there's a lot of corn up there, a lot of corn, soybeans in those areas. And I think, you know, they thought their biggest risk going into this year, you know, because the crops do look good, it's just wet corn. They're thinking, you know, they're going to have a lot of drying costs and a lot to think about there to manage that. And, you know, also, you know, we've kind of been asking some of these growers, you know, how are they doing on old crop inventory, just kind of get a handle on basis and where people are at on old crop.

And it kind of sounds like there isn't really any excess old crop sitting around anymore in the Dakotas. And we'll talk more about that. Kind of heard the same thing in North Dakota too. A lot of those big piles of soybeans in the Dakotas, there was a few areas where we saw piles last winter of, you know, a million bushels of soybeans in a pile. And the information we're hearing from the growers that we work with, you know, those piles are pretty well used up. They're gone. It's not to say there isn't soybeans and some big bins and stuff yet, but pretty much everything, all these piles are cleaned up. So not sure that the inventory is, you know, super small. But on the same token, I think we've used up a lot of the sole crop, you know, inventory that maybe is— people think is a problem, right?

Narrator: And just to keep in mind for those listening, you know, I want to plant the seed in there is this isn't just the large piles either. From the producers that we've talked to, from 400, 500, 600 acres all the way up to several thousand, this is something that you're seeing pretty much across the board. Of a lot of this inventory is getting pushed out of storage.

Chris: Right, right. And a lot of, a lot of people took advantage of a good basis and continue to take advantage of that. Um, let's move into, you know, we're still in South Dakota, but, um, it's kind of a different world in the two, two parts of South Dakota. You got northeast, which isn't too bad, looks decent. Um, get into southeast, uh, we talked a lot to Bryce Gillen. He's a producer around the Mitchell area, and he does a lot of tiling in that area. And basically, I would— my description of where he's at, he kind of lives on the moon. There's just not a lot planted. His— the way he put it, I like, I like best, is, you know, he said, you know, we planted 60% of our acres, you know, and 40% of them are going to be harvested.

And so if you think about South Dakota, while it's not maybe a huge state in the whole grand scheme of things, but In southeast South Dakota, that's, that's where 60% of the grain that's produced in that state comes from. So, you know, it's not insignificant to say that the prevent plant is a big deal in that area. It just is. And the crops are behind. And, you know, we continually hear that from everybody we talk to. Well, yeah, we got these acres planted, but what are we going to harvest that actually has grain on it that is something that's going to yield? Another common theme that we continue to hear is shallow roots. You know, they're going to need to continue to get rain in, you know, in August.

They've been getting the rain though, and all across South Dakota, it sounds like, you know, they didn't get quite the heavy rains that we saw in some other areas, but they've been getting enough rain to kind of keep the crop going along. But basically I was told, you know, in South Dakota, if you shut the rain off, you know, you can be in a drought situation in about 5 or 6 days just because of the shallow roots. Anything else I'm not hitting on?

Narrator: Yeah, so one thing that I want to make a note on with the Dakotas, and we've said this several times through other podcasts and conversations that we've had with producers, but a lot of people don't see the Dakotas as major producing states. For some reason, people in the I-states and other areas have it in their mind that, no, we grow corn here, The Dakotas, they just kind of play around, and that's very not true. Uh, there are so many acres, continued production out there that is seeing the impact of this season as well. And while they do experience that variability, even for the more difficult growing conditions, I would argue in their area, they even realize that this is a significant year and how weather and growing conditions and the crop development is being impacted right now?

Chris: Well, especially as you look at those two states in the last couple of years, their production has been pretty high. I mean, it's not uncommon for these same producers we've been talking to for this podcast to have 175 to 220 bushel corn whole farm averages in some of these areas. So they, you know, these are highly productive areas. You know, the big concern that I think these guys are going to run into this year is the potential of an early frost or even just a normal frost is gonna be a huge impact, I think, on just grain quality. And we'll talk more about that as we move forward. But—

Narrator: How about Nebraska?

Chris: So yeah, let's look at Nebraska. I've got that one somewhere here. Where do I have the Nebraska? Okay, I've got it. Lots of sheets here, but Nebraska, they did get a wind event. And actually I didn't mention that on the Dakotas, it kind of clipped some of, Some of the Dakotas too, where they had a big windstorm go through about a week ago here towards the latter part of July. You know, what we were hearing is anywhere from 5 to 30% greensnap. So not a huge deal, but looked a lot worse than I think than what it was. Basically what I'm hearing in Nebraska across the whole area, they're probably 10 to 15 days behind in terms of crop maturity. For corn anyway, further behind in soybeans. But Nebraska as a whole looks excellent. The irrigated crops are phenomenal, obviously, and the dry land has been getting enough rain so far that the crop conditions look really good.

Rains have been timely, you know, so they've had cool nights and they had a little heat during the vegetative stage, which actually helped them in that area. It helped the crop root down a little bit. For a period of time. So they're actually sitting pretty good. You know, their normal frost date, for example, one of the growers I was talking to in central Nebraska, Roy Paulman, was talking to him and, you know, there he's thinking they'll be black layered by, you know, probably by the 1st of October. But their normal frost date is September 20th. And so, you know, not everybody's out of the woods even when, you know, your crop looks great and you think things are in good shape. There's still some risk to be had yet. But I think that, that pretty well covers, I think, North or Nebraska, unless you have any other.

Narrator: Yeah, so one thing that I want to make a note on is National Corn Growers Association. They often post corn condition ratings and how things are with development. Nebraska is at 75% in good to excellent condition as of July 28th, per National Corn Growers Association rating. Which is above average even from, from last year, well above average for this year. Iowa 65, Illinois 43, 36 Indiana, 34 Ohio. And I think some of those numbers can even be argued a little bit on how are you defining excellent to good. But just to give you an overview, a 30,000-foot picture of how Nebraska is in general, a lot of those areas are looking good.

Chris: Well, and to point that out too, back to South Dakota for a second, one thing I kind of missed that Bryce had made a comment, you know, you can rank this crop good to excellent, good, fair, poor. And if you look at those, the stage of development, at what stage of development are those ratings relevant? So, you know, like for example, Bryce told me, you know, their crop a big percentage of it's in the, probably in the good to excellent rating, but that's for the 4th of July and we're almost to the 4th of August. So, you know, they're a full month behind. And so those ratings have to be taken with a grain of salt, you know, with respect to, you know, we have a lot of growing season to go yet and we cannot handle dry conditions and especially heat on top of the dry.

Narrator: I mean, so far the forecasts are good, but And I'll knock on wood here a little bit, but with the lack of rain that we've been seeing in a lot of these regions, we've also had a lack of weather events. And so I knew that that storm had gone through Nebraska, South Dakota, even hit some of western Iowa there a little bit. Uh, and there's producers everywhere, of course, that get hit by freak accidents, but overall this year we haven't seen significant impacts from storms and weather.

Chris: Yet, right?

Narrator: We, you know, we've kind of dodged that bullet and skirted around, and that's why I knocked on wood there. Hopefully we can stay away from that. How about Kansas? What are you seeing in that area?

Chris: Um, Kansas, basically I had a conversation with a grower that we haven't talked to for a while, so it was kind of interesting just to catch up. They're dry. He said they've kind of missed out on some of the rains and they've been catching a bunch of that heat. That heat that's down south has kind of been catching their region. Basically in a nutshell, they're right in the middle of tasseling right now. So they're a little behind schedule as well. And so he said, you know, kind of talking to Cameron there, basically he's like, you know, this isn't the time that you want the heat and the dry weather when you're right in the middle of tassel. They had issues. I mean, they were wet and cold and had just kind of issues.

He said that some of the fields in there in, across Kansas are really showing because of the dryness and the heat coupled together, they're really starting to see some of the fields that were planted under not ideal conditions, things that, you know, some of the fields that were where there's some compaction. He said that's really starting to show up really well there now. And so, you know, kind of, we kind of ranked his excellent rating still in that 25%. So about 50% in the good, about 30 or 20% in the fair and about 5% in the poor. They have had a little bit of wind and some issues, but nothing terrible there yet. And he, you know, his big thing was the pivots where the pivots are, they're running hot and heavy in the dry land, starting to look really rough.

Narrator: So, right. I'll move into Texas here. I had the opportunity to talk with Russell French this morning, and he's a strategic account manager with Pioneer, covers a 5-state area. So to paint the picture, he's Southeast Colorado, Southwest Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas Panhandles and areas of New Mexico and maybe even a little bit farther outside of that. Covers a large area, sees everything from irrigated to crop or dry cropland, excuse me. Also low populations to extremely high populations. He covers a wide area. One of the biggest things that he said is they need to get away from some of the heat that they've been seeing here. So I'm only going to speak for the Texas Panhandle. That's the region that he's closest to. Near and dear to home.

And then I'm actually going to try and link up with him here on Friday to get a little bit better of a Southwest report, do a short podcast there on irrigation that I think will be extremely interesting. But, um, you know, they had some of a wet spring there in Texas too. And what I thought was interesting is when you think Texas, it's not just a separate state like Iowa, Illinois. It is a massive area. And so there's actually harvest starting Southern Texas right now. Within the next week or so, uh, should be to the Dallas area. He's been hearing excellent reports as some of the stuff that we've seen from producers as well, just some phenomenal crops coming outta that region, uh, irrigated and dryland. As you move up into the Panhandle, like I was saying, they had a wet spring as well, uh, as a lot of the Midwest and really the entire Eastern United States.

Chris: Did.

Narrator: Um, but they're in a position with their growing season that they'll plant 112, 113, 114-day corn out to the middle of June. So said a lot of this stuff, uh, has, has been tasseling here in the last 2 weeks. Uh, hit a real hot spell, so it'll be interesting to see how that develops. But they're looking at some cooler weather, uh, moving in there. Some of the dryland areas, uh, not, not to put words in, in Russell's Mouth at all. Um, but he said with the dry land, you're seeing stuff that's below average, stuff that's above average, and stuff right in the middle. So looking pretty normal there for what you would see in a normal dry land year. There are some really good irrigated areas, and, uh, he said some of the sorghum is actually looking outstanding in their region.

Uh, a lot of people have, have moved away from sorghum here in the last 5 to 10 years, uh, just with some insect issues and other, other disease issues that they've had there. But he said the sorghum that they have in the region is outstanding. So it'll be interesting to see here with a little bit of cooler weather moving in. Hopefully they can catch some rains. But overall, Texas, I think things are looking pretty good.

Chris: Sounds good. So I guess we move into Minnesota next. We've been— we've traveled through Minnesota quite a bit as well and had some conversations here today with a couple of growers there. They did get caught by that wind that we talked about that hit some of the Dakotas and a little bit into Nebraska. In fact, to the point where I think a couple of the guys I talked to were thinking, you know, maybe as much as a 30% green snap, so possibly quite severe. But upon further notice, you know, sometimes things look a little worse than they are, especially on green snap. You actually do some counts and I was talking to a specific grower, Cole Pastore, as he was basically saying, you know, 5 to 10% though is probably more realistic as to what, from his perspective, what they were seeing.

You know, also I would say the southern part of Minnesota, and as you go over to Rochester and then up a ways, not all the way to Owatonna, but up a little ways into the state, things look pretty good. Actually quite good, especially in the corn. Maybe only 4, maybe 5 to 10 days behind schedule on maturity at the most. So they're pretty, pretty close. There is some variability, just like what we've seen in a lot of areas. They did have good rainfall. They had the kind of the right amount of rainfall, not too much, not too little. They were about 4 inches during the month of July for rainfall. You know, the, the feedback we're getting in the big majority of the state is that the soybeans are looking pretty good, but, you know, 20 to 30% of them were planted late. And, you know, that's where the concern is again, is really with the soybean crop almost more so than the corn.

But as you get up, you know, into that Owatonna area and a little farther north and a little bit west, there was, there were some pockets in there. The guys really struggled getting some things planted. And so there's obviously a fair amount of prevent plant in some areas. Across that region of Minnesota too. So, so you can, you can just kind of explain it by variability, you know, kind of like we're seeing in the Midwest, just some really good stuff and then you don't drive too far and all of a sudden you see kind of a mess. So that's kind of, kind of the report for Minnesota.

Narrator: And I think you said a key phrase there is they've hit some of the key rains. They've had some consistent rains come through and from early on in the season, some of the travels that we had southwest Minnesota talking talking with producers there, they had a good dry time where they were able to get some good planting windows in. Things looked good early on. And then they were able to catch rains. I mean, every 3 to 4 days we heard from Zach Johnson here last week in his area, Southwest Minnesota, they were catching rains every 3 to 4 days. And when you look at crop progression, you know, not only early on the season with the vegetative growth, but they've maintained some of those rains kind of throughout the season. So I think there'll be some areas there in Minnesota that, uh, that are looking really good.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. As far as we get to Iowa next, I guess Iowa is, is a, is a kind of a common theme of, of the whole entire Corn Belt. There's a lot of variability you get out in the western area, uh, to the northwest. There's some pockets that there's some prevent plant where things didn't look so good and they're in an area where the last couple of years they've had some challenges. So I feel bad for some of those guys that are in some of those pockets. It seems like they've had a couple of years of just really challenging spring. And then the other thing too, you know, there's areas where in Iowa, things look pretty good. And obviously it's been reported all along the way that Iowa is probably, or could be quote unquote, the garden spot. I guess I would say, It does look good, but I drove, um, actually yesterday from Northeast Iowa down to Des Moines.

So drove across, you know, probably more than a third of the state, right across the middle part of the state. And, and I would just classify it as variability, starting to see some nitrogen deficiency show up in some areas and some things that, um, are going to be probably, um, symptoms of the weather we had this year that are going to take a little while to show up. The other thing you and I talked about, Shay, before we started the podcast too, is some of these fields— I was able to, to get in a couple of these fields the last couple of days, and the color looks really good in some of these fields. So you drive by and you think that looks like a 200-bushel-plus corn field, but then you get out there and you look at the stands, and the stands aren't there, um, as well as you would think.

So it's pretty easy to find areas where there's a lot of gaps, where, you know, you're missing a couple of plants. All along the way, you know, you count 100 plants and if you're missing 5 of them, all of a sudden that starts impacting yield. And so I'm anxious to see, you know, when the crop tours get going, when Pro Farmer Crop Tour goes and they do their ear counts and that kind of thing. I think that that information is going to be real critical too, just to get a clear understanding of, you know, what's really out there, because looks can be deceiving. And then a lot of that stuff's hidden right now too. You almost got to have a drone to get up and look because in Iowa, a lot— like I said, a lot of stuff from the road looks pretty good. I'm still concerned about the beans though. We saw a lot of really short beans in our drive yesterday, and just, you know, the nodes aren't there.

A lot of, you know, most of the 30-inch row soybeans I don't think are ever going to canopy. So there's a lot of weeds. We're seeing a lot of waterhemp and a lot of, a lot of issues that I think are going to have a yield impact on soybeans, not to mention maturity being way behind. So that's my thoughts on Iowa, unless you get some other additional.

Narrator: Two things that I want to mention on corn there that you kind of hit on is that variability. And, you know, some of that stuff is hard to see from the road, but when you get up at that 10,000, 20,000, 30,000-foot view, or you're up in a drone, whatever, and you look at it, especially with tasseling being prominent right now or in the last week or so, that's when you really start to see the variabilities and you're not looking at differences of 1 to 2 days. It's 5, 6, 7, 8 days difference in some of those, some of those areas. And the other thing too is with the corn, if you have hybrids that don't have flex capabilities, that aren't having the populations, if you planted or, you know, if you had a final stand emergence of 25,000, that's what you have. That's what you're working with.

And it, it's been easier as things have gotten bigger, you know, the corn's grown a lot here, uh, last 4 weeks in particular, um, that that stuff just kind of goes away. It kind of hides, or it seems like it hides. Well, when you're in the combine, it's not going to be hiding anymore. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. But, you know, the other thing too is there is some good-looking corn. So you mentioned kind of the Garden State area. I mean, we talked about how Nebraska is doing well. South— Southwest Iowa has some phenomenal-looking corn, and that That's what people are calling some of that garden region right now. That is maybe, you know, good to excellent conditions in a regular year, which makes it exceptional here in 2019.

Chris: Yeah, because another thing I didn't mention too, in Iowa, which will bleed into Illinois and Indiana and stuff too, but we're dry. We had, we had just barely an inch for the whole month of July. And obviously we've got good subsoil, but, you know, in, in the north or in the eastern quarter, eastern half of Iowa, let's say, about 25 to 30% of the corn was planted late, and all those late planting dates are starting to really look a little tough, especially in these areas that are similar to our specific area right here when you only get an inch of rain in the whole month of July. And we had some heat in the front part of that, so we consumed a lot of the topsoil moisture, and we're relying completely on, on what's in the reserves in the subsoil. And the soybeans are highly, highly, highly at risk right now because we're going to need August rains.

I don't care how cool it is, you're gonna need some water at some point here.

Narrator: Yeah, and that's northeast Iowa for those of you who may not know where we're located. And they have, they have caught some rains. I think that's a really good segue to Illinois. So you said an inch here in July. I would say that in the last month and a half, the area that I'm located in, northwest Illinois, we have had an inch and a half in the last 2 months of rain. And so great subsoil moisture conditions to start off with, planted maybe into some poorer conditions or a little bit later that really affected some of that root depth and things in the corn that you're seeing. Real late planted soybeans that are short stature. And I think you can kind of divide the state into, into 3 sections. So north, central, and southern. And I had the opportunity to drive completely through Illinois 2 different times here. Within the last week.

And the variability is a key factor there, kind of that real northern region where they got heavy rains, things are looking poor. You get a little farther south, there's a pocket there of maybe 60, 70 miles that didn't catch as many rains. There's some good to excellent looking corn in there that, you know, doesn't look bad compared to the rest of the state. You get into the central area and they got real, real tough conditions., as far as rain goes. And then southern Illinois, there's some better looking stuff there that they didn't get as much of that rain. And kind of the same sentiment, we'll hear from a producer friend here in Missouri that commented on, on the rains that they caught there. Uh, once you get into that southern Illinois region, you're not seeing as much of that.

But I think one of the, one of the points that I really want to drive home here on today's podcast as we talk through what's going on in Illinois is in a normal year and you're driving through, uh, good-looking corn, good stands of soybeans, you look out and it's just, yep, everything looks good. And you might have 220-bushel corn or you might have 320-bushel corn in it, and it's hard to tell. But I can say with confidence that as you drive through Illinois, you know when you're looking at a 200-bushel field because it is that significantly different from so much of the other ground in the area. And that, that was a real shock to me. You know, you talk about that, that backyard, backyarditis, I think is how you refer to it, and you get accustomed to what's in your area.

But when you really drive around and then get out into the fields and take a look at what you're seeing out there for stands, it's very apparent when you're looking at the 1% of crop conditions that might be much more widespread in a normal year.

Chris: Yeah, one other thing, we have a pretty heavy presence with clients that we work with in Illinois across the state. And just in fairness, you know, there are some really, really, really ugly crops that some of our clients have just had to give up on, you know, so that when you start talking planted acres versus harvested acres, that's going to be a whole nother story. And we can address a little bit more of that here in a minute. But, you know, that's the thing. I mean, we've got a number of producers that we work really closely with in Illinois that have basically had to give up up on the majority of their crop just because of the amount of rain they had. They, they waited to plant, they finally were able to plant, they were in that late plant period, got stuff planted and then got another 4 or 5 inches of rain on top of stuff and then just threw the towel in, you know.

No nitrogen, what nitrogen was on there was gone anyway. And so, you know, so there's going to be a lot of that, um, that's going to be counted in this USDA report and a lot of, you know, a lot of this that's going to be traded you know, where they're looking at planted acres that sure, they're planted, but they aren't going to yield anything.

Narrator: And so, and to follow up with that, that's an excellent point because when you look at the prevent plant date for corn in Illinois, in our area, Northwest Illinois is June 5th. And there was a lot of corn planted the 5th through, I'll say the 12th of June.

Chris: And about 35 to 40% of the corn was planted in that window.

Narrator: And there's been no rain. Oh yeah, you know, it's— it was not— not only was it not planted into good conditions, um, but it was also, uh, you know, no rainfall to follow up with it, right? So I think that's a pretty good overview for Illinois there. What we have here today, we're kind of doing a blended podcast. We're going to splice in some of the audio segments that were sent in from friends, clients, producers that we know of in the industry with Indiana, Wisconsin, and Missouri to give us some updates from those areas. And then we'll be back to finish off 5 other states here: Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. So we're going to turn it over now to Kara, Brad, Jeff, and Jared up in Wisconsin. So give a listen.

Jeff

Cole: Hi, this is Jeff Cole. I am a Pioneer Strategic Account Manager in Central and Northwest Indiana. I would say the crop is really varying degrees of average. If I had to pick a number out of 100, I'd say it's probably like a 70, you know, a solid C, C-. There's definitely some acres, a couple counties that have as much or more yield potential as they've ever had, but that's an extremely limited area. There's large amount of prevent plant acres and acres that probably should have been prevent plant that, you know, struggled out of the gate and have continued to fall behind. So huge disparity in the haves and have-nots. As I look ahead to the next 2 weeks, I'm most concerned with those June planted corn acres that are tasseling and pollinating and They're doing it when we're a little dry or quite dry in some areas, in some counties. So that's going to be really stressful.

Luckily, we will get out of the heat wave. We're going to have some more average and lower nighttime temperatures. So that's, that's really beneficial. Also, really being careful to make sure we're not missing any fields that have some yield potential and that they're showing disease pressure, particularly, particularly gray leaf spot. However, most of those farmers, they know what they have and they're making some very timely fungicide applications. I do know there's maybe a little bit of tar spot in the far north part of Indiana, but it's a really limited area. We'll keep our eye on it. I've also heard some southern rust confirmations in southern Indiana, but nothing too extremely concerning right now. So we'll keep an eye on it and hope for the best.

Shay: Well, good morning, Shay.

Chris: This is—

Shay: I'm the owner and president of Cross Creek Ag Solutions and Cross Creek Farms, Inc. We're based out of Greentown, Indiana, which is just north central Indiana, about 56, 60 miles north of Indianapolis, directly north.

Narrator: Great. And what are you seeing in your area over there, Brad?

Shay: Well, it's interesting that we're just now— I'd say about 5% of the crop has been tasseled in the last week to 2 weeks. And that was tasseling during the point in time that we had the extreme heat. So we're now done with that pollination period, and we're starting to pull back ears and starting to see, you know, what's, what's been pollinated what hadn't been yet. 90 to 95% of crop— well, I'll take that back, I'll say 80% of the crop that was planted in the first week of June, the first 10 days of June, is within 4 or 5 days of starting to tassel to maybe a week to 10 days of being pollinated or fully pollinated. At that point in time, we'll have a really good clue of where we're at. With this crop. But I will say that 80% of the acres that were planted that first week of June, the stands are tremendous. And they're still there.

But the challenging fact is, the thing that we all drive around, look at, we see this corn crop look really good. But the problem is it's still looking good for July 1st to July 10th, not August 1st is tomorrow. You know, we're still far behind. So part of it is most people, if you've got a good stand, a good field of corn, and you're looking at, you know, what, what are we going to basically put more into this crop and try to push it along? Some guys are still spending money, whether it may be fungicide, whether it be Y-dropping, whether it be putting biologicals on and trying to get, you know, this crop maybe moving along a little faster, hopefully get to senescence. Yet there's quite a few people that are just saying, hey, We've already fertilized for a 160-180 crop. We side-dressed for that. We're, we're done.

And we're either gonna play the insurance game or we basically have taken the point where this crop is going to have to do what it's going to do. But up until, let's see, 2 days ago, on Monday afternoon, Monday evening, we had pretty much almost 2.5-3 weeks with no rain. And we were super dry, super hot, and the crop was really taking a toll. I mean, it was, you know, you got corn that's V12, that's rolling up tight and just not looking really great at that point in time.

Narrator: But now that stuff, that stuff that was tasseling there in that high heat, are you able to see any tip back on that yet, or is it still too early for that?

Shay: Still too early. The one thing I have seen is some ovules that really towards the butt of the cob that didn't get pollinated. So the tip back hasn't happened yet, but they didn't get pollinated because it looks like we had silks that were emerging late or were dried out once they got emerged from the butt of the cob, which that's where they emerged from first. And so it'll be interesting to see here as we get the milk phase. Oh, in the next few weeks, you know, week to 10 days, I'll start pulling back ears and saying, okay, where are we at on what actually got pollinated? So We've been meeting for the better part of a week. And I gotta get my rear end out in the field and start shucking ears back here soon when they start getting that point. But that's kind of where corn is for the north central Indiana and northern Indiana.

Northern Indiana is a little farther along, but a lot more variability. We traveled all the way to the Michigan line over the weekend. And we drove up I-69. And it got better and farther along, farther north we got, but the the more variability we got, where it's all relatively even, and you had a lot of major differences from corn that was, you know, knee-high still in areas to corn that was, you know, the next mile was tasseling.

Narrator: So, right. And we've heard that, we've heard that from a few different people that we've talked to there in Michigan that we mentioned here in the podcast as well. So it's kind of interesting to see how that played out. A lot of difficult decisions still being made and wishing you guys the best of luck here. So thanks for the update from Indiana there, Brad. We really appreciate it.

Shay: No problem. All right.

Narrator: Have a good one.

Shay: You too.

Chris: Okay. Thanks everybody for sending in the audio reports. We really appreciate that and want to get a good perspective for everybody that's listening. So thanks again for that. And we're going to take off here now and continue our conversation on the 16-state review with Michigan. And had a really good conversation with Pioneer sales rep up there. His operations and where he works with customers is just south of Lansing, about an hour and a half is kind of where he's at in Michigan. And he was basically saying, you know, things in his area look pretty good. They had just come off here in the last couple of days with, you know, 2 to 4 tenths of an inch of rain. They've had pretty timely rains along the way, but, but It's getting, getting dry, you know. Um, they, like I said, they did have that rain, but the irrigation systems are running. Um, 70% pollinated in his area.

Um, you know, they're, they're thinking they're pretty safe, you know, as far as where the maturity of the crop's at, as far as an early frost, because they're in a little zone that did get planted timely. It was kind of funny, I was talking to him a little bit about the idea of You know, what's it look like to the north of you? And he said, well, we're really good, and it's not so good as you go north. You know, there's some prevent plant up there. And we talked a little more. I'm like, okay, well, how about, you know, when you, when you look to the east? And he said, well, it gets a little rough over to the east. And we talked about that. And then I said, you know, obviously towards the south and southeast it gets even worse yet. And he said, you know, there's nothing down there. And to the west there's some issues.

And I said, so you're just telling me that, you know, you're in a spot where it's really good, but to the north, south, east, and west, it's real bad. And he just kind of laughed. He's like, yeah, pretty much, you know, we're in this little pocket. So I think it just, it spells variability, um, to me. That's the common theme we just keep hearing from everybody is, you know, you can find some good stuff, but you don't have to go very far to find some really bad stuff too. So that's kind of what we got out of that conversation.

Narrator: And something to keep in mind there too, I think that's a great example of We're talking to a producer and a couple different people, as you heard from the reports there that were sent in, of some of these people are in excellent areas, some of them are in really poor areas. But we're trying to do when we talk to, you know, clients, producers, friends, those in the industry, is get a perspective on the larger area. So we don't want listeners to get dialed in thinking that we are completely representing the whole state and also that we are not just focused in on one area. We're trying to get a good perspective on these regions. Um, so I think that's an interesting point to pull.

Chris: Yeah, it's really just perspective. I mean, it's like we said in the beginning here, it's easy to get backyarditis and, and think things are really good or things are really bad. And there's a lot of everything this year. And I think we're going to be a little bit smarter in August with the report, but then I think also a lot smarter when combines roll. But that's That's kind of the Michigan report. What other one did you need from me? Or I guess you got Ohio.

Narrator: Yep, moving into Ohio. I had the opportunity to talk with a producer in north central Ohio here this morning, Mark Schaefer, and they caught a rain, uh, 7 to 10 days ago now. They got almost 2 to 3 inches of rain that really helped with some of their intercrop and second crop soybeans. Uh, pretty optimistic on the look of some of their soybeans there. Uh, obviously kind of throughout the Midwest, you're seeing beans that are lagging a little bit behind, not canopying quite as quickly, but they're optimistic in, in that region. But as we've mentioned before, also they can use another 1 to 2 inches of rain throughout August and even into early September to get the fill that we need. Just because you have beans and pod set, if you don't have anything to fill here in the next month or two, uh, gonna see significant amounts of, of yield loss associated with that.

Now, when we were talking Kansas earlier, they had some good regions, and I don't know if we hit it on it maybe as well as we should have, but Kansas had some phenomenal wheat yields, uh, this year.

Chris: And it kind of, kind of throughout the Southwest, 70 to 100 bushel yields is phenomenal for their area for wheat, right?

Narrator: And in Ohio, it was the opposite story. They had huge amounts of winterkill, um,, you know, just hard deep frost throughout the entire winter. And they were looking at 70 to 80 to 100% wheat stand loss, uh, moving into this year. So one of the worst wheat harvests that they've ever had in that area. And then the other crop that we talked about there was corn in the region. And there was an interesting point made that the top-end yield of corn is gone in that area. And I, you know, I thought that was interesting because as we talk about some of these other crops, you know, beans, they can get some rains, get late fill. Uh, wheat had some variability there. Sorghum still has a good potential for a strong finish in the areas that it's doing really well in, but corn has lost that top-end yield potential.

And so as we look at the fields that you can definitely tell that they're going to be making 200 or they're not going to be making 200, um, you know, how much more are you going to feed this crop? How much more are producers going to be willing to put in as far as fungicides through tasseling, late season management, and then how will that affect harvest? You know, as Brad alluded to in Indiana, are you going to be playing the insurance game? Are you going to be playing do we harvest? As you're seeing in some of the Dakotas, you know, some of those areas aren't even going to be harvested. And just kind of interesting, Ohio, as we talked about last week in one of the podcasts as well, there's a lot of prevent plant in that area, so they're getting 1-2-3 punch, you know, jab, jab, right hook coming at them right now, trying to finish here strong in the season.

But a lot going on there in Ohio, definitely. So I'll move into, uh, kind of the last 3 states here, and this will be a little bit of a running piece. This was a drive that I was able to do down to Georgia, getting a good look at Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia there. And I guess what I would say is as you go south and east, things look better until you get to Georgia. They had some areas that they were real dry, drought conditions early on in the season. Definitely saw the impacts of that. Kentucky National Corn Growers Association is rating that area 69% good to excellent. I think that's, that's a fair rating. And then Tennessee, um, you know, I, as the corridor that I was driving down, I didn't see any bad-looking fields through that area. Uh, even good emergence, good stand, uh, pollination going on right now and has been for the last 2 weeks.

Chris: Uh, so they haven't had the heat either.

Narrator: No, they've been good conditions weather-wise too, and they actually caught a few rains here a couple weeks ago too. That is doing well for them. There were some short soybeans out there, um, and then obviously as you get into these areas, you're looking at a lot of second crop. Uh, so Georgia second crop soybeans, uh, a lot of cotton out there that was looking good. Tobacco's looking, uh, phenomenal through Tennessee and into Georgia. Um, and then corn, I would say they're probably 3 to 5 weeks out from harvest right now, but the corn that was in Georgia, especially the irrigated acres that I saw, was looking really good. So I guess maybe the, the lesson there is the farther you get from the Midwest this year, maybe the better off you are.

Chris: Yeah. And, and that's, that's the crazy thing. You know, you look at the middle part of the country where we have the highest yields, you know, in the I-States and over into Ohio and some of those areas where you just got some of the best soil and, and we've got some of the biggest holes and some of the most challenging areas you could ever possibly have. And You know, the, the bright spot in that, I guess, is there's some pockets in North Dakota, and there's a big area in the, what you would call it, the probably the southeast quadrant of Iowa over into Nebraska is pretty good. And there's an area in southern Illinois down in there that's pretty decent too, down in there where they kind of are pretty normal, but It's interesting too, Shay, you've had the corn basis map and I would encourage people to print that out, take a look at it.

'Cause when you look at where the basis levels are the highest, that map, if you overlaid that map on where the crop conditions are the worst, there's a lot of continuity there and a lot of similarity as far as where the biggest trouble spots are. And so I think basis is kind of leading the story there a little bit and kind of shows you, you know, where the biggest challenges are. Relative to that. And we kind of are starting to see, like we talked earlier, we're seeing trucks and trains and things go a lot further with grain. And we're seeing some of these piles that were there from the '18 crop vanish really quickly. And so, you know, we're setting, I think, on an unprecedented, risky, challenging, unpredictable, variable challenge that we've really never seen before. 25 years of working with growers across these areas, I've never seen anything like this.

It's unbelievable, the amount of variability. And the only thing I can say is we have never ever in all the years we've worked with growers had variability be a positive thing, term, in terms of production. It's usually, it spells trouble typically. So you don't want to overemphasize that. It's not to say that there isn't some really great crops out there. There pockets where things are awesome, there's pockets where nothing exists. And so we just want to again bring perspective. I guess we want to wrap up here with, with just some common themes that we saw from everybody, and hopefully you got this out of that. But real quick, you know, we'll hit these. The first thing is variability, we just touched on that. The next thing is we need rain in August.

So if there's traders and And for any analysts out there listening to this, obviously, you know, heat is one thing, but we are going to have to have some water to get this crop finished up. I don't care how cool it is. We're going to have to have some water. We've heard that consistently everywhere.

Narrator: And even moving into the cooler weather that is forecasted here, you know, like we talked Texas, Oklahoma, that region, and even on into the Midwest, just because we have those cooler temperatures to reiterate, we have not had the precipitation levels that we've needed. Not enough. Looking at an inch and a half to 2 inches in the last, you know, 60 days, that is not enough to finish this crop like we need to, even with the excessive amount of rains that we had early on.

Chris: Well, and that segues as to why, you know, the other common theme we heard from every producer was shallow-rooted corn. And, um, you know, that spells issues if you don't continue to have, you know, the fill period is something that, the market a lot of times doesn't recognize. And there's 40 bushel on corn during the fill period, plus or minus, if you don't have water to finish that thing out. Cool weather is very critical, but to get test weight and to get kernel depth to equal yield, I mean, we can tip these ears back a little bit and make up for it on the other side, but then we're going to have to have the water to do that. So, and it's not just temperature alone. The other thing is, is I think Growers are somewhat optimistic on their corn because we did talk about it. It looks good.

And so, you know, if the conditions are right, we do keep the heat turned down and we do get some water. Sure. You know, the corn, the corn's got some opportunities there. Soybeans, on the other hand, I think they're a lot more suspect. We heard that from every single farmer that, you know, I'm a little more concerned about soybeans than I am corn. So that's, a common theme. Maturity is behind. That's just an absolute truth. We heard anywhere from, you know, on the short end, maybe 5 to 10 days behind, all the way up to 6 weeks behind. The 6 weeks behind stuff's going to be silage. You know, the stuff that's 4 weeks out, I don't know. I mean, I don't think anybody knows, but what we do know, and we heard from everybody, is the concern on an early frost. But what does that spell?

You know, that might spell some yield reduction, but more importantly, what it spells, if we have even a normal frost, what that brings to us is probably some quality issues on the grain side of things, both on the corn and soybeans. It gives us a concern for, you know, wet and just handling issues. There's a lot of areas that really aren't set up for drying corn and handling that much wet grain. And so that's going to be a big issue. And I think that's also something to be thinking about on the soybean side of things too, is just if we have an early frost, that could be a big yield hit to the soybeans. If we have any kind of an early frost, especially in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Northern Iowa, Michigan, Northern Indiana and Ohio, those areas, if that, if that cold weather would happen to dip down into any of those areas, we're in deep trouble on the soybeans.

But if we have a normal frost, maybe a little less trouble.

Narrator: And one thing that I want to point out there on the lack, the lack of maturity in the crops right now, you mentioned 10 days to 6 weeks behind, and that's 10 days to 6 weeks behind normal planting conditions. That's not even optimal planting conditions. And so the further you push that crop back and kind of flirt with what's coming up with frost and what kind of finish that we get, that's going to have a huge impact on that. And the second thing that I wanted to mention there is this basis that we briefly touched on earlier. If all of a sudden you have crops in the north and west area, I guess if you draw a line kind of through Missouri up through Illinois and into Michigan, north and west, that's where basis is narrowing, but still what you would consider a little bit more average.

If those crops are being affected, you know, those garden areas are being affected, what's the basis going to do there? Poor quality. What does basis do there? And then how does that affect everything to the south and east of there where there's no supply or low supply?

Chris: Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of this story yet to be told. Um, we don't have all the answers, but again, our, our whole goal was to, to try to bring perspective, um, to everybody. And, you know, and, and one final thing I just want to mention that we did ask everybody is we, you know, we asked, you know, what do you have for inventory on hand. And I mentioned it in a couple of the states, but across the board, what we heard was less inventory than normal. So I'm not exactly sure where all the, this carryover is at because most of the growers we talked to are sitting on a fair amount less. I would say 50% of the growers we talked to have zero left. And so, like I said, I'm not exactly sure in our cross-section of the world anyway, we're not seeing very much carryover. In fact, we're seeing a significantly lower amount of carryover. And so I, you know, that's far from statistical.

It's not scientific. Again, it's just a perspective. It's just conversations that we're having with, you know, some large growers across the Corn Belt and across the country that are serious very efficient, very effective, and very business-minded producers. And so I think that kind of wraps up a lot of my stuff, Shay. You know, I think on common themes, unless you got any other thoughts there too.

Narrator: Nope, that's kind of what we've seen here.

Chris: So you want to go ahead and say thanks to a bunch of the—

Narrator: yeah, and just something we want to point out here at the Ag View Pitches, we absolutely could not do this this without the network, the clients, the producers, the people in the industry that, that drive this information and this perspective that we bring to you. I mean, we have a phenomenal group of people that are willing to share because they enjoy the perspective that we're providing as well.

Chris: So, and this, this made a lot of work for us too, because, Shay, I don't think I— I mean, we've done a lot of these podcasts and we do these things off the cuff. I mean, when we're talking to Dwayne or whatever, you know, sometimes people will say, well, how do you have time to do those? Well, we just have a conversation for perspective. But I would say we did a lot of work for this one. We, we did a ton of interviews, we've talked to a lot of people, and again, it's not super scientific, but it's perspective, and hopefully it's valuable information. And if you got content or questions or anything, please let us know so we can do it, do a good job of bringing you what you need.

Narrator: For perspective, right? So to thank all those that contributed today: Zane Erickson, Bryce Gilland, Grant Ricks, Rourke Pullman, Cameron Funk, Russell French, Cole Pistorius, Kara Metier, Jared Schmidt, Jeff Cole, Brad Downing, Matt Howe, and Mark Schaefer. Thank you all for contributing. Hope you're getting some outstanding value out of this. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us. You can email us at agviewpitch@gmail.com. Cbarron@agviewsolutions.com or give Chris a call anytime, 319-533-5703.

Chris: That's right. Um, that's— appreciate everything, Shay. This was a lot of work, but it was educational for us and hopefully it was educational for everybody else. And, uh, I think that covers everything for, for this episode and we will catch everybody next time on the Ag View Pitch. Thanks.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the EggView Pitch. As always, you can reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com or duanel@netins.net. We'll catch you next time on the EggView Pitch.