2012 Wrap Up

After 1650 miles in 5 states over 3.5 days, we returned to Central Illinois with a vastly different opinion than we honestly expected.  I think we expected to see drought stressed crops that were starting to "burn up".  What we actually found were dry soils and good crops with good potential.

In case you are wondering, this is NOT similar to the summer of 1988.  For one thing the heat to date has not been oppressive .  1988 had 21 days of 100 degree heat.  By June of 1988, everyone knew the crops were bad, they just didn't know they were awful!  This tour of the West showed us that there are pockets that need rain and will need more rain to reach their full potential.  The potential in these fields is still very good.  We would rate the overall crops over the whole tour an 8 for condition.  Without SE Iowa and Wisconsin/N IL, these crops would be rated a 9.

In comparing these areas to last year,  1)  the stands (population) are better than 2011  2)  the fields are overall more even.  There are not water holes where crops have drowned out.  Right now every acre in these fields will have something come fall.  3)  Last year this area needed to dry out some and then rain needed to continue to feed a shallow root system.  This year the root system is 10X better but rain is needed to finish the crop out.  4)  If most areas were to get 4-5 inches spread out over the remainder of June and July, the yield will be big.  5)  There are not less corn acres than what was projected in March (our opinion). For one thing, there is virtually no prevented plant acres.  They usually project like 3 million acres for PP (last year that number was higher than that).  Plus last year they were thousand of acres lost due to flooding.

In conclusion, we don't think you can hold your crop waiting for significantly higher prices unless it just stops raining EVERYWHERE.  There are isolated pockets of drought conditions.  They are not likely to drop the nationwide average below 155.  With acreage being up slightly we think overall production is likely to rise by the end of the growing season (given some more normal rainfall patterns or a Gulf hurricane in early July).  We would scale up sales if you are comfortable with your crop prospects.  Betting on a drought and low yields for this crop is just like going to Vegas and putting everything on 4 at the craps table.  You have a slight chance to be correct.

Again I would be remiss if I didn't thank our sponsors.  A big thank you goes out to Anderson's for hosting our videos this week and for providing the equipment to record it.   And thank you to the Agvantage insurance agency and Precision Agronomics for gas and lodging money.  Also thank you to Jim Prough for all of the encouragement, help driving and conversation.  He was also the talent in the videos, I was the grunt.

Good luck to everyone for the remainder of the summer.  We will try to provide some yield results in the fall from a couple of these stops to see if we know anything about summer yield projections.