About This Episode
Chris Barron and Shay Foulk report from the road after driving the I-80 corridor through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Barron's one-word summary is confirmation: the trip matched what they expected to find. They grade each state good, bad, and ugly, with an important caveat. What they are calling good this year would have rated only fair in 2017 or 2018, since even the better fields are running two to three weeks behind and some problems are still hidden.
Iowa split about a third good, a third bad, and a third ugly, with uneven stands, weedy soybeans, washed-out areas, and nitrogen-deficient corn. Illinois came in around 20 percent good, 40 percent bad, and 40 percent ugly, with conditions falling off sharply 40 miles north and northeast of Peoria. Rainfall was intensely local: two farmers within ten miles of each other had three quarters of an inch and more than four inches over the same three weeks.
Conditions worsened moving east. Indiana rated 1 percent good, 50 percent bad, and 49 percent ugly, with heavy nitrogen deficiency, bare acres, and almost no cover crops on unplanted ground. A short pass through south central Michigan looked the same or worse. Ohio came in at 1 percent good, 29 percent bad, and 70 percent ugly, including stretches of 10 or 15 miles with nothing planted. Both argue the ratings need a category for fields carrying no crop at all.
“I've never driven through Illinois this time of year and not seen good crops everywhere.”
— Chris Barron
Key Takeaways
Barron's summary word for the whole trip is confirmation: the I-80 corridor looked as bad as the reports suggested, and in Ohio worse.
Iowa graded roughly one third good, one third bad, one third ugly, with the good fields still two to three weeks behind normal.
Illinois came in around 20 percent good, 40 percent bad, 40 percent ugly, deteriorating fast 40 miles north and northeast of Peoria.
Indiana rated 1 percent good, 50 percent bad, and 49 percent ugly. Ohio rated 1 percent good, 29 percent bad, and 70 percent ugly.
NCGA reported 90 to 92 percent of Illinois corn emerged, which Foulk questions given how many acres they saw with nothing on them.
Rainfall was extremely localized: two Illinois farmers ten miles apart reported three quarters of an inch versus more than four inches over three weeks.
Full Transcript
Shay: Welcome back everyone to the Ag View Pitch. Today we have on Chris Barron and myself, Shay Foulk. We just wanted to give you a quick update. We're doing some traveling across the Midwest here, went across about 5 states going from Iowa over to Ohio. Wanted to give you a little bit of perspective on what we saw from our trip kind of through the I-80 corridor. So Chris, if you want to go ahead and kick it off.
Chris: Yeah, it was kind of an interesting drive. I guess that the— if I had to put it all or summarize it into one word, And we talked to Duane on the phone on the way over here and he was asking, you know, what'd it look like? What do you think? Is it what your expectations were? My one word is confirmation. I think it basically what we thought we were going to see is essentially what we saw, I think.
Shay: Right. What did you see? I guess, you know, so you met me there in Illinois from Iowa to Illinois. How did that look for your end?
Chris: I mean, again, probably what we thought, you know, as we went across the Interstate 80 corridor down 380 and across that way on the southeast side or portion of the state. I would say, you know, we— because I like spreadsheets, you know, I like to break this into the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so we'll do this by state. But, you know, Iowa first, um, a third, a third, and a third. I'd say about, you know, a third of the crop that we saw was, you know, looked good. But I want to, I want to qualify good by saying it's still behind, you know, it's behind 2 to 3 weeks, but it looked okay, you know. And some of those spots are probably hidden. So a third there, a third of it looked bad, And by bad, I mean, not only was it behind, but it was uneven. And, you know, and this is classified thinking of both corn and soybeans, you know, and the good, the bad, and the ugly.
So, you know, I think there was some fields that the soybeans that were pretty weedy yet too, and things like that. And on the ugly side of things, just washed out areas, crops that just are nitrogen deficient, soybeans that are just emerging, I call that ugly this time of year, this late. So that's kind of what we saw in Iowa, a third, a third, and a third, good, bad, and ugly.
Shay: And I think a good conversation that we we had on the way over here offline was the stuff that— and you alluded to it— the stuff that is good this year might be fair in 2018, 2017. I mean, it's not outstanding.
Chris: Yeah, the good stuff was, you know, good for this year, not good for last year or the year before, just too far behind.
Shay: And I think what we saw then in Illinois, we met there on I-80, in my area near Peoria, we're in a pocket that was fortunate enough that we missed a few of the rains, still had a later planting season. And so overall, though, for the state of Illinois, as soon as you went about 40 miles north and northeast of there, it got bad in a hurry. And so I would, I would rate that about 20% good, 40% bad, and 40% of it was pretty ugly. And I know some of those areas not only had caught the rains early on, But they've continued to get dumped on with rain. And there were a few farmers that we were talking to yesterday that within 10 miles of each other, one has only had 3/4 of an inch of rain in the last 3 weeks, and the other ones have had 4 inches or more. And so it's just, it's such a pocketed area. But overall, Illinois, those were kind of the conditions that we saw there.
Chris: Yeah, just crazy. I've never driven through Illinois this time of year and not seen good crops everywhere. First time ever in my life of you know, 15, 20 years by driving through there and just seeing such unevenness. It was crazy. And I would kind of agree with everything you saw there.
Shay: Yeah. One thing that I wanted to make a comment on too is National Corn Growers Association put out some numbers yesterday that quite a few of our listeners have probably seen. And it says 90, 92% of the corn in Illinois has emerged. And there's different percentages on what of that is looking good. But it brings into mind on whether that stuff that is looking good is the stuff that, you know, is that just the stuff that's emerged? Because there's a lot of acres out there, as we saw, especially getting into eastern Illinois and then definitely into Indiana, that there's nothing there.
Chris: Yeah, and that's the thing. We're, we're kind of like the crop condition rating with what we're saying. I mean, we should probably also have a category of zero. I mean, where there isn't anything planted. And I guess You know, when we got into Indiana, I'll take that state next, you know, we had, we had a 1% rating for good, you know, so we saw what, one field or something, it was like almost nothing. And then, you know, the bad, we had a 50% in that in the bad category, and the ugly category, we had the 9 or the 49%. So the, so the one field kind of offset, offset the ugly part. But I don't know, I think Indiana was really, again, like I said earlier, just confirmation that it's not good. And it was wet there. I mean, it— you could tell they were— they'd had some recent rains too, and, and really struggling with nitrogen deficiency.
And I think that stuff's going to show up and going to throw more of this crop into the ugly category as time goes on, you know, if guys can't really or don't want to justify going out and spending more money on this crop.
Shay: And one thing that definitely surprised me on that was with the fields that are still bare. And I hadn't fully developed this thought when I said this, but I was really surprised at the amount of COVID crop that was not there and that producers have not either made that decision yet or just physically have not been able to get out into the field. And so the weed pressure that was there outside of not having a cover crop down, I thought was very significant.
Chris: Yeah, that was pretty evident that— I don't know what— we probably didn't see hardly any fields that had any cover crops on.
Shay: No, I didn't see one. And I One thing that I think we should qualify here too, and we're talking about the bad category or the bad and ugly, kind of what that looks like is clearly defined tile lines. I mean, 3 to 4 crop growth stages ahead of the other areas in the field, uneven emergence, places where the crop was, you know, completely drowned out, just not present, or weed control— or lack of weed control, I should say— that was completely dominating the crop.
Chris: And how many of the fields we saw the tractor tracks where you could just see, you know, exactly where every, every tillage pass or the planter pass went or whatever. It was pretty ugly. So you want to hit Michigan? That was a pretty big one.
Shay: Yeah, well, we were in Michigan for about 4 and a half minutes. But what we saw there was just a continuity of Indiana. I mean, it was, yeah, I would, I would even say a little bit worse as we got just a bit farther north. It was ugly. It was bad conditions. And of course, we were just in the far south central area there, but nothing good that we saw in our short jaunt up to Michigan.
Chris: I'll take Ohio. So as we ventured into Ohio, again, in the good, bad, and ugly categories, we only had 1% in Ohio on the good category, 29% in the bad category, and 70% in the ugly. And we probably should have, like you said just a minute ago, we should have a category for nothing. 'Cause when we first got into Ohio in that western part, when we were driving in there, would we drive 10, 15 miles, literally did not see a field planted. At least it was bare, nothing planted. And so you want to talk about confirmation, I started getting confirmation specifically in Ohio. I'm like, okay, there's nothing planted here. And that— and then we started seeing some stuff, and then we did see one good field. That's why we had to do the 1%. In the good. And that, and that again, that was corn. We did see one good bean field too, which kind of shows the whole idea of planting beans early.
Apparently even on a crappy year like this pays if you can ever get out there to start with.
Shay: But, and I think what we saw in Ohio too is when we, when we did start seeing stuff, it was either super wet, there was wheat already there soon to be harvested. We saw a couple combines rolling in the countryside. Or as weeds.
Chris: Yeah.
Shay: And, you know, when we say nothing was there, well, that's not true. There was a lot of weeds there too. But Ohio, you know, I wanted to guess by the crop reports that have come out in the 120 miles that we drove through the state there, the conditions would have been as bad as they truly reflected to be. But I was very surprised with that.
Chris: Yeah, I guess my summary of what we saw is that I feel like having driven through there year after year after year through that same pretty much corridor, I would say that, you know, that's some of the best crop production area that you're going to find, probably in the world. And we saw a lot of empty fields, we saw a lot of bad, we saw a lot of ugly and not very much good. And so I guess that's the confirmation that I talked about at the beginning. That's just kind of what, what I saw and what I took away from it that that, yep, it's not good. And we're going to need a lot of really good weather. Like Dwayne said in the previous podcast, we get any kind of heat and dry conditions, this is, this is really going to be stressful.
We did see a couple of fields pineapple where they were, you know, we went from a wet area to a dry area, and you could tell that the compaction was really a big issue. So that's kind of, kind of my thought. We are here in north central Ohio for a peer group meeting. And we'll definitely know a little bit more. And Shay, you and I will have a conversation with the host farm who's actually starting to harvest some wheat today. And so we're going to be going out to the fields here in a little bit and watching some wheat harvest and having conversations about what's going on in this part of the world.
Shay: So, and another thing you can expect here in the next few days, we'll be talking a little bit about these crop conditions, how it affects your bottom line as a producer. And as we really get into the, the decision-making season of do we continue to feed or not to feed this crop. So be looking out for that here in the next few days. Hope you enjoyed this segment, everybody, and we'll catch you next time here on the Ag View Pitch. Hey, podcast, hope you enjoyed our crop report here today. Be sure to check us out at Ag View Solutions on Facebook and Twitter, also on LinkedIn. And if you have any questions, as always, please email us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. Take care.