The John Deere Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour wrapped up Thursday night, as crop scouts from the tour’s eastern and western legs linked-up in Owatonna, Minnesota.

Tour leaders issued their corn yield estimates and average soybean pod counts for Iowa and Minnesota Thursday night during an on-location shooting of the “U.S. Farm Report” TV show. For Iowa, Pro Farmer’s estimated corn yield of 145.99 bushels essentially matched its 2005 estimate. Pro Farmer Editor Chip Flory said excellent corn in eastern Iowa offset drought related problems with corn in western Iowa.

“The Iowa number surprised a lot of people because we came in dead steady with the number that we generated last year on this tour,” said Flory. “And it surprised a lot of people because of some of the problems we saw over in the Western Belt,” he continued. “I cautioned people all day, ‘Don’t get too excited about this. We have to see what comes out of the eastern tour. There could be enough good on the eastern part of the state to pull up what was bad on the western part of the state.’ Turns out that’s just exactly the way it was,” he explained.

That didn’t happen in Minnesota. Pro Farmer’s corn yield estimate there came in at 150.15 bushels per acre, down 8.5% from 2005. Roger Bernard, Pro Farmer’s senior news dditor and eastern tour leader, said that’s despite excellent conditions in southeast Minnesota. But Flory said inconsistent corn yields in southwest Minnesota pulled down the overall estimated corn yield for Minnesota.

Soybean pod count totals for both Iowa and Minnesota were lower compared to the 2005 crop tour results. Iowa soybean pod counts averaged 1175.64, down 6.4%. Minnesota soybean pod counts averaged 1091.01, down 4.8%. But Flory said those figures could have been much lower had it not been for timely rains earlier this month.

As for the crop tour as a whole, Flory said crop scouts found drought limited corn yields in the western belt, but that those timely rains helped boost soybean yield potential in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. On the tour’s eastern leg, Bernard said yield prospects for corn and beans varied widely from state-to-state, with Illinois seeing the most improvement over 2005.

According to Bernard, the eastern corn belt will likely see a robust corn crop, if not the bin-busting production some had thought earlier in the growing season. “That’s still a solid corn crop that’s going to be coming in off the eastern corn belt this year,” he said.

Pro Farmer issues its estimate of the U.S. corn and soybean crop on Friday, August 25th, at 1:30 p.m. Central time. Pro Farmer says data collected on the crop tour is just one component of that estimate.

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