Crop prospects 2025: fact vs. fiction from the field

Chris

Barron: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today we have Lewis Stearns with us from Progressive Crop Solutions. And where are you at today? Looks like you're in your office.

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, out in the field. Been spending a lot of time in the fields in Ohio, Ohio today. But the team and I have been scouting across the Corn Belt pretty heavily here.

Chris

Barron: So like I said, I think you're in your office. There's a reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you because you're kind of all over the place with respect to crop prospects. And before we started recording, I was just telling you, you know, I'm on purpose not on social media. If I need to know something, Shay informs me if there's something on X that actually is factual or a trend that actually might mean something. There's a lot of noise out there, and the noise I want to start with is around pollination. And before I get to that, StoneX came out a day or two ago with a 188 national yield. You know, we've got 95 million acres planted. You know, we'll see what we harvest is what really counts, is, you know, what are the harvested acres.

And, you know, and from what I've seen, just anecdotally driving all over the place, and the only state I haven't been completely through is Nebraska. Otherwise, I've essentially been in every state. And I would tell you from 70 miles an hour looking at the crop, it looks the best I've seen maybe ever. I remember back a few years ago in a couple different years, it looked really good, but I see the most uniformity now. And the beans weren't that way early, but they they appear to be that way now. I've really seen a significant change and stuff. So with all that said, StoneX comes out with a 188. I want to start drilling down into some of the things that you're observing in the crop with respect to fact versus fiction. And I think that's what we'll call that is, you know, crop prospects, fact versus fiction. And so let's start with the pollination.

It sounds like, you know, the tassel wrap and all this stuff was, was a big deal, at least on social media. Was it a big deal in the field, or what are you seeing?

Lewis

Stearns: Pollination issues were widespread geographically. But when it comes to acres affected, plants affected percentage-wise, it ended up, we feel, being pretty small. We could find it kind of across the whole Corn Belt., and through a wide range of planting dates. You know, at first it was just the early planted corn, but we found it clear through June planted corn here in Ohio. So it didn't seem to matter when we planted. There were certain varieties that were worse than others. We were really concerned when it first came on. The early planted corn that's progressed pretty far now that had pollination issues, did end up pollinating a large percentage of the kernels. They aren't the best looking. And if we go under stress, we feel like we have a chance to lose those again. But it ended up not being as bad as far as pollination misses as we expected.

So broadly across the Corn Belt, we could find it about everywhere. But the amount of acres affected was low. And maybe Maybe the reaction to it initially was a little bit stronger than what it should be. Now, that being said, we can't predict what the heck's going to happen here going forward. But right now, it looks like it's going to be better than we expected maybe 30 days ago or 21 days ago.

Chris

Barron: I think as farmers, we hope for the best and the worst at the same time, right? You know, we, We want our crop to be good, but there hopefully somewhere there's a problem. And this year there's no somewhere, you know, it seems like, you know, everybody's got a lot of good situations. Now there are pockets. It's just that the pockets seem to be really small. I mean, typically what I will see in an average year traveling all over the Corn Belt, it seems like you see areas of issues Now this year, what I would say is I've observed pockets of issues and they're pretty small, you know, it seems like. With a little bit more drilling in on the pollination portion, did it take a bushel off the yield? Did it take half a bushel off the yield? Or is it too impossible to predict? And is it likely that it really didn't even impact anything?

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, with these genetics these days, Chris, our team, we talk about it every day. We get asked about it every day and we have no idea with the way these varieties can flex and different things. I will say the more stress we're under, the bigger risk of loss. I mean, obviously it's going to do something if we're missing kernels on that ear, but the more stress we're under and we can't express that true kernel fill so that, that final kernel fill if we have cool and adequate moisture conditions and we can extend that grain fill period, we probably end up with a lot less loss than if we speed this crop along to the finish with some warmer weather and drier tendencies.

Chris

Barron: So, mm-hmm. Yeah. And it seems like a lot of these hybrids anymore have been bred with some pretty good kernel flex. We talk about ear flex, but there's kernel flex too, right? And that seems to be something that's really been kind of a powerful thing at fill period. If we, like I said, if we get the right weather and stuff. Yep. I want to shift over and we'll stay on corn for a bit. I want to talk a little bit about August. Well, no, before we do the August weather, I want to hit on fungicides. I have seen, and I was telling you this before we started recording, I've seen more airplanes flying around than I think I've ever seen, more drones flying. I've actually seen drones driving down the road, you know, I would have never seen that 2 years ago. Where you're driving down the road. No, there's a drone spraying, you know, they're just so much.

And then a lot of ground applications and things, probably the most fungicide applications I've ever seen. Can you talk about what that might be doing to enhance the crop, even though we're talking, you know, everybody's going to show pictures of tar spot on social media and all kinds of other crap and the crop's going to die? It, you know, it seems like everybody's out trying to protect the crop because it is so good. They're trying to protect a Cadillac instead of a used Buick type crop. Talk a little bit about what you're seeing with fungicide and what, what that might be meaning for the crop as well.

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, so we, we had more growers than ever kind of plan that fungicide application into their program this year. And we've, we've really focused a lot on aggregating our customer information, our customers' data, and then returning that back to them in usable form. So When we talk about 2024 and look back, our customer, our average customer saw a 17-bushel increase. Sorry about that. Sorry, somebody driving, actually drone, a drone rig driving right by me. Weird, huh? Oh yeah. 17-bushel increase in one application of fungicide versus not spraying across our entire customer base when we put that information together. And if we remember, 2024 was a fairly dry season towards the end, disease pressure was all over the place. So using that information and then with tar spot experiences that growers had, more and more people are just planning for that application.

The interesting thing about this year, when we talk broadly across the Corn Belt, the presence of tar spot heavy pressure is probably the lowest that I've seen it since it's been around. I mean, it kind of started right here in our neck of the woods in northeast Indiana. Northwest Ohio in by the lakes here. And it's— I mean, you can find a few here and there, but as far as pressure picking up, that's not the disease that's on our mind right now. And we talk broadly across the Corn Belt.

Chris

Barron: It's interesting that you say a 17-bushel yield increase. You know, most of the applications with— if you know, if a producer is using $4 corn or $9.50 soybeans, you know, you don't need too many bushels. I mean, you know, 7 or 8, I mean, it's significantly more than $5 corn or $13 beans or whatever. But, you know, when you do the math, it's almost a no-brainer then based on the aggregated data you're seeing. Plus, you know, this year you would think we would have more severity, and what you're saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, is you're actually finding a little less tar spot than maybe you did even a year ago. Is that Am I hearing you right?

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, for sure. For this point in the season, we're definitely seeing less presence of tar spot. We think a lot of that has to do with the heat that we've had, that we don't have quite the conditions.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. So what about soybeans? Is there any, any data on the soybean side of the equation from fungicide that you're seeing?

Lewis

Stearns: Yep. So same, same database from 2024, 6 bushels on the beans is what we came up with. And again, a lot of areas, as you well know, had a dry finish and bean crop, you know, was kind of off compared to what we would have expected. So to see that, that's a, that's a pretty good ROI.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. For sure.

Lewis

Stearns: And then to go back to your corn comment real quick, Chris, one thing that we often don't think about too, but that happened last year, the dry down was so quick that I know you guys talk a lot about harvesting 18 to 22% or above. You know, we, we averaged 1.8% moisture higher on sprayed versus not. So that gave us that window to be in that optimal range a little bit longer when we have these quick dry-down falls.

Chris

Barron: I think the other noticeable thing for a lot of producers that we've seen is just, uh, um, it helps with that harvest window. You know, there's some intrinsic value to standability and just stalk strength and some of that stuff. Would you Would you agree with that?

Lewis

Stearns: Completely.

Chris

Barron: Yep.

Lewis

Stearns: 100%.

Chris

Barron: All right. So let's kind of carry the conversation forward here as we go. We're talking about, you know, we're entering August as we record this. We're the, you know, recording this on the 6th of August. And so we'll see how smart you are here at the end of August if somebody is listening to this at the end of August. But, you know, I was just looking, I just was talking to Shay a little while ago and I was looking at the 45-day forecast and Um, there's no extreme heat. There's heat, you know, I mean, 86, you know, if you, if you average those 45 days, it was like just shy of 86 degrees, and it's cooling down based on that 45-degree forecast, assuming it's right. Um, the other thing we noticed though is the nighttime temperatures were right around 66, 65, 66 degrees, so we're cooling off in the evenings. Talk about the implication of that from two perspectives.

One, fill period, and two, disease on the— let's do the corn crop first.

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, so let's hit disease first because that's top of mind for our team. Our weather pattern has really flipped the past 10 days to where we've had a lot cooler nights and a lot more fog. So we expect the— that's kind of what Tarr Spot's looking for. So we expect that to kick up here. And with previous knowledge of how fast it can come around, I mean, 7 or 10 days. It can really turn up. So we need to continue scouting, we need to be watching, even if we sprayed a few weeks ago, and this crop's progressing, we need to stay in the fields and watch this stuff. So we have concerns around that. As far as, you know, an ideal weather pattern to finish, those cool nights and mid-80-degree days are about right. And sunshine's critical. You know, the smoke and clouds, We need good quality sunshine to finish this crop.

And we don't often realize, we just focus on temperature sometimes, how important that is. Now, with all that being said, there was a good amount of corn that went in early this year. When you think about the entire Corn Belt, a lot of that corn we're seeing, you know, there's, there's a lot of corn that's dented already. That's kind of not going to be able to take full advantage of this weather pattern that we're talking about. There's a lot of discussion around a good amount of acres in our client base starting to get harvested around Labor Day or a little after. So thinking about that, you know, we've got a shorter period to influence that kernel depth and take advantage of these cool nights that we've had compared to the hot nights and the hot high temperatures that we've had, you know, earlier in middle July, that timeframe.

Chris

Barron: One thing that is interesting to me too is it feels like, you know, we continually almost every year, at least from profit manager perspective, and when we look at the average yields, and we're seeing, you know, and if we just trend that out, we're seeing about a 3.5 to 4 bushel annual yield increase, just kind of on like a, on corn specifically, on, on kind of looking at a trend line, um, you know, and when you compare how good the crop conditions were across the entire Corn Belt and, and the outer regions regions of where, you know, corn isn't, you know, it's really not the best environment for it, but they seem to, you know, get decent yields. This might be one of those years where, you know, it sounds like in the Georgia area, those guys, you know, they have really hot nights.

And it sounds like, you know, a couple of the clients we've got down in that area that are starting to harvest, sounds like really high yields. How much of an impact do you think, you know, the nighttime temperatures and the temperature thing we have, do you see that impacting yield or helping yield or really just finishing up pretty normal?

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, so I guess as I think about that, this year's crop just feels like there's not one big thing that is really affecting it. It's a compounding of the factors that are affecting a lot of fields more than others. And it's just hard to quantify, you can just see it, it though, you walk into a field, like you've said, they look green, they look beautiful, and you start to peel back ears and, uh, you count out, you lay out your plot of 17.5 feet. You got 3 of them that you peel back the, or you look at the husk and the ear size, you think, oh, it's great. You peel back the husk and it's tipped back a third of the way already. And you, you kind of look and you're like, okay, well they all emerged the same. We had great emergence, but we went under some kind of stress after emergence when we had our nodal root switchover around V5.

And we were seeing a lot of variation that was driven in that June timeframe from either dryness, wetness, cloudy days, all that stuff. And it seems like those issues are carrying forward now. And then those are what are being affected by the hot nights, the disease, the pollination issues, you know, the, the ears with pollination issues, a lot of them they are, they are plants that went under stress or took some kind of stress earlier in their life that we're seeing. The ones with tipback, they're the ones that are the late emergers, they're the ones that went under stress in June. So that's kind of the comment that I'll, I'll, I'll leave for that.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. Talk about that same perspective from soybeans. What do you, what are you seeing there? Because it looked to me like in our early travels, heading around visiting with farms. The soybeans were pretty rough start, which I've heard you say before, that's, that's not a bad thing. You know, they should look crappy in the beginning, and they did. And now they really are starting to look pretty even, really clean. There's some pockets where we're seeing waterhemp to the north for whatever reason. It seems like— I don't know if they had environmental conditions. I was telling a farm operation the other day, it seems like about Highway 3 and north of Highway 3, we're seeing more waterhemp to the north than we are to the south. I don't know what's going on there, but talk a little bit about soybeans and kind of what— how you see a finish potentially coming out there.

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, so I've kind of said all season that this, this bean crop has been the most impressive to me that I've ever seen in my career. Maybe not from a size of the plant standpoint, but when you look at flowering and potential, tremendous. Now we all know that beans can disappoint us in a hurry and things can turn. So I still feel like with the amount of acres that went in early and all the things we've done from a management perspective, these beans have a lot of potential. Concerns on my mind. Number one, SDS, already starting to get calls, you know, first week of August, SDS showing up. Not a big surprise with all the big rains we've had. A lot of people that are higher management are kind of treating for that, but there's still a lot that aren't. So SDS, white mold disease, and then, you know, you just know that beans often don't like to be super wet.

So that's in the back of my mind. But I feel like the bean crop probably has more potential, broadly speaking, to surprise us than the corn. I'm not going to quantify that. I'm just saying, looking at it and feeling it just seems like there's more consistency when you get out on top of this bean crop than maybe the corn crop.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. What I want to circle back again now to the, to the fungicide discussion for a minute. Now we've kind of talked about what prospects we may see and some of the probabilities. You say that there's a 17-bushel and we'll pick on corn first, that there's a 17 bushel advantage, and, and I assume those were pretty much one pass, right? That was— that would have been the one pass. If we have the appropriate conditions, environmental conditions, for, you know, for a tar spot to come in, and as you said, you know, it can come in really quick, I mean, within 7 days you can have a hell of a problem. Um, what's the justification? Is there a justification? What should people be thinking about? Is it, is it feasible for an additional fungicide application?

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, so we've had a hard time making a second application pay, broadly speaking. The two-pass system across our client base hasn't been great. A lot of times that second application breaks even or just a little bit under. So we don't promote that. A lot of what we're doing there is just around standability and stalk strength. So in our heavier tar spot areas that have had it for years, they know how quickly that it can come in and shut that plant down and kind of hollow the stalk out. So the rule of thumb we use is if we've got Dented Ears, if we're at Dent and we have really no lesions from the ear leaf up, We're probably safe to go ahead and finish that crop without a second application and not having any issues.

If we're before dent and we start to see tar spot lesions showing up ear leaf and above in a big way and climbing, then we probably need to come in with a cheap product. We don't need to use our expensive products, but a generic of some sort and make that application to knock that back for our final 21 days to finish the crop there.

Chris

Barron: Okay. I guess what I want to do next is, well, let me ask on soybeans, any, any justification there at all?

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, I don't want to give away our secret sauce of a little project we've been working on, but there's a lot of good information supporting we might be in these beans more, more than we are, broadly speaking, now.

Chris

Barron: Okay. What about, you know, just some plant health stuff then, as you say that, is there any kind of biological systems or anything you're seeing from a plant health standpoint on soybeans or corn for that matter, but anything you're seeing there that stands out from, from a, you know, you know, from an independence perspective, you know, not selling a product, but you know, what's, what are you seeing? Anything there?

Lewis

Stearns: I wish there was, Chris. We're constantly looking all the time. We're looking for that next thing. Our growers are asking for it. Have not found one that's consistently performing that we feel like that we could put in front of our growers and say, you know, let's use this to move the needle forward.

Chris

Barron: Okay. Appreciate that. I guess I'm going to, I'm going to put you under pressure here for a minute and I'm going to ask you, because I guarantee you there's going to be a ton of brokers, marketing type people looking at this and they're looking at people like yourself. To try to figure out what potential is really here. You know, the market, you know, depending on who you talk to, who you listen to, they'll say, you know, we're trading anywhere from a, you know, probably a $183 to a $190, somewhere in that range on corn, and probably a $50 to $54 on soybeans. Are you in the middle of that somewhere? Are you leaning higher, lower? And I'm not going to tell you, you know, you got to give me a number, but are you are you leaning to the higher side of kind of the range that the traders are in? And, and most of those guys don't know anything about the crops. You do.

So I think there's more validity in a perspective or just an opinion, and it's not holding you to it, but just, just an early August opinion at this point.

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, I just think we've got too many little things wrong with this crop that are gonna that we aren't going to know until December, January, February. Once we get the combines through and realize what's going on here, we don't have any major issues. Like we've said, we don't have the holes in northwest Iowa like we had last year. We don't have severe drought anywhere. We've got a nice average crop and probably above trendline crop. But I don't really get the feeling that is that it's, you know, a huge percentage above a record. There's just too many little things that are starting to compound on top of each other that you get out and pull back ears and look at this crop. And it just, it seems like there's potential for some disappointment as we get into it. I mean, not from the standpoint of, oh, we thought it was going to be, you know, 250 and it was 150.

From the standpoint of we thought it should be 250 and it was 225. And when we look at historical averages on some of these fields, I mean, and you take 10% above the best it's ever done to meet the expectations that you're talking about, you know, that's going to be 250, 270, 280. And you need a lot of consistency. I mean, you need a good chunk of acres, well over 300 on a yield map to accomplish that. So I just ask people if they feel like they have that, if they're truly out in their fields right now. So again, I can't, I can't predict it, but I just get the feeling that we just aren't quite there to blow it out of the water. It's not a It's not a perfect crop. It's a nice crop, but it's not a perfect crop.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, it— I think it's the, it's the consistency, like you said. And what, what it always seems like to me, it has a lot to do with it, is how the outlier acres do. You know, the North Dakota acres, the, the, the southern, the Delta, some of that, you know, can really pull it down fast. It sounds like those areas are pretty good, but we got a long ways to go to the north. You know, those guys in the north have a long ways to go to finish yet too. Not to mention, you know, the, the I-states and across the center of the Corn Belt as well.

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, you, you guys talk about a used Buick or a new Cadillac. I, I put it somewhere around a Toyota Corolla.

Chris

Barron: Okay.

Lewis

Stearns: It's going to take us where we want to go and it's going to do a nice job for us, but we're not going to pick up too many chicks driving around with it.

Chris

Barron: Okay. All right. That's a, that's a good analogy. I like it. Okay, so let's wrap up with any perspective from you from the standpoint is if you put your farmer hat on and you're somewhere in the Corn Belt, you can be in the south, the north, the middle, whatever, and maybe it's different for each of those areas, but with your farmer hat on, what are you doing? What are you paying attention to as we wrap up August and get in real close to harvest time? What are the things you're up to and what are you doing? What are you watching?

Lewis

Stearns: Well, so we're, we're just, we're in the field, we're watching for disease to show up in the corn and beans. But really, we're turning our attention to how the heck we're going to spend the least amount of money on fertilizer this fall and not give up yield. As you know, as well as anybody, budgets are tight, and fertilizer is out of line compared to grain prices. But we've got to move forward with another crop. So being able to study the data, study an operation, work with them to figure out what their budget is and how can we allocate that budget, you know, as appropriately as possible is the biggest thing on our mind right now because cash is tight. Fertilizer is ugly and it's just not a fun conversation, but it's what we got to do to move forward.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's scary because I think we're going to find out, but I'm really— I'm nervous that we're going to have big yields and big losses potentially, depending on what this market does. And, and, you know, hopefully we're having a, you know, a harvest low here sometime in August and not, you know, not in the middle of October. Once you, like you said, once we figure out sort of the combines get rolling in a big area, then I think the market will have some reason to adjust one way or the other. And I'm, you know, it can go lower, it can, you You know, I was, I was involved in the hog market back in the '90s and got to see what hogs could do. You know, you think a market can't do something, the market's going to do whatever it wants to do. But, but the reality—

Lewis

Stearns: that's where— right. And that's where I'm just thankful that we've started to do more of this data work. And we've, we've built up a nice client base and the clients have trusted us to put this information together. We just posted a video last night to our clients talking about optimal soil test levels and application rates and things like that. And just being able to leverage that information, you know, in a big way instead of just using some of the industry or university data. I'm just very thankful we have the ability to do that. And I feel like we've got good potential to put our growers in a good spot.

Chris

Barron: So that's awesome. So if people want to reach out to you and one-on-one have some questions or want to look at some of your services and what you're up to, Um, what's the best way to get a hold of you guys?

Lewis

Stearns: Yeah, you can just email me directly if you want to put out my email there with the, with the link, and then, or text or call 419-889-2254.

Chris

Barron: Sounds good. Well, as usual, Louis, you got a lot of really good information. You guys are, are doing a ton of value for a lot of our clients and working with a lot of growers, uh, helping them, um, capitalize on the number one thing to lower your cost of production, which is increasing yield. So appreciate all you do and thanks a lot for your time today. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. With that said, everybody, if you guys got other questions, want us to be hitting on anything either on the Ag View Pitch or 19 Minutes, let us know. With that said, we'll catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.