Annual Pro Farmer Crop Tour Will Assess Drought Impact and Crop Health

Crop Industry Stakeholders Use Tour Data From Seven States for Insights Around Projected Grain Supplies and the Effects on Commodity Markets

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2023 / Pro Farmer, a division of Farm Journal, hosts farmer-scouts and industry experts this week as they cover fields across Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota on the 31^st annual Pro Farmer Crop Tour. The tour runs Aug. 21-24, covering seven states and capturing the attention of the agriculture industry and national media. Observations and results of Pro Farmer Crop Tour will be shared nightly at in-person events throughout the tour and streamed live online at www.agweb.com.

"Heading into this year's tour, we know the corn crop was heavily stressed by dryness through June," said Brian Grete, Pro Farmer editor and Eastern tour director. "From our 30 previous years of experience and data collecting, we know the recipe for a strong yield is to rush the crop to pollination and then slow it down through grain fill. One of the keys will be how much damage we find from drought conditions in the first half of the growing season."

The tour is the most thorough and most followed inspection of yield potential during a critical time in the growing season. A summary of findings will be presented nightly at 8 p.m. CDT through a live-streamed broadcast hosted by Clinton Griffiths, Tyne Morgan, Chip Flory and Brian Grete.

"USDA no longer collects objective yield samples in August, so Crop Tour will be the first to broadly measure ear populations and pod counts from actual fields across the Corn Belt," said Chip Flory, "AgriTalk" host and Western tour director. "The objec­tive is to find a representative sample of yield poten­tial across the seven Corn Belt states. We'll pull more than 1,600 corn and 1,600 soybean samples, which should provide significant insight into where this crop is and how it may finish."

Each day's official findings and results will be published on ProFarmer.com, where subscribers have exclusive access to comparative data of past tour results.

Registration is required to attend nightly meetings and to access live-streamed results each night. Registration is available at www.ProFarmer.com/register.

Robust daily coverage also will be delivered on AgWeb.com as well as "AgDay" TV. Grete and Flory will join tour scouts on "AgriTalk" radio at 10:06 a.m. and 2:06 p.m. CDT to share the latest crop observations each day of the tour. Real-time reports will cascade across social media at #PFTour23. Pro Farmer's national crop production estimates will be published in the Aug. 26 issue of the Pro Farmer Newsletter.

Founded in 1973, Pro Farmer is owned by Farm Journal and the leading subscription-based market advisory organization in agriculture serving members across the United States and Canada.

Contact Information

Susan Rhode
Farm Journal
srhode@farmjournal.com
(913) 213-7110

SOURCE: Farm Journal