By Katie Micik
DTN Markets Editor
HABILIND, Ohio (DTN) -- Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour scouts on a route through northwest Ohio saw a lot of soybean fields with drowned-out patches and corn lacking nitrogen. Prevented planting acres increased as scouts moved northwest from Columbus, Ohio.
After five stops, scouts on this route averaged 159 bushels per acre compared to USDA's estimate of 168 bpa. Yields ranged from 142 bpa to 184 bpa. Ear counts ranged from 73 in 30 feet of two rows to 106. Most ears were smaller than last year, averaging about 6 inches.
"I think it's pretty variable," said Joe Wise, a veteran tour scout and farmer from Indiana. "There's some decent corn, but overall I'm not impressed with Ohio's corn crop. It's maybe a tad bit better than I thought, but we've seen a lot of poor corn, even though it doesn't show in our samples."
Shortly after Wise offered his assessment, he entered a field with emergence issues and severe nitrogen loss. "Pretty much everything that could go wrong in that field did," he said.
That field was the scouts' sixth stop and was estimated at 67.8 bpa.
After five stops, scouts estimated the average pod count in a 3-foot-by-3-foot square at 991 pods, about 200 pods less than the 3-year average.
"I've seen a lot of short fields," Wise said. "Without a rain in the next 10 days, Ohio's going to go down significantly from what USDA pegged."
USDA estimated soybeans would average 48 bpa.
Katie Micik can be reached at katie.micik@dtn.com
Follow her on Twitter @KatieMDTN
(CZ/SK)
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