Preliminary Route Report with Lane Akre, eastern Tour leader
What counties (with state and district) have you sampled from?
IOWA – Grundy, Butler, Bremer, Chickasaw, Floyd, Mitchell
Corn yield range: 157 to 249 bu. per acre
Corn yield average: 203 bu. per acre
Soybean pod count range in 3’x3’ square: 672 to 2,054
Soybean pod count average in 3’x3’ square: 1,438.8
Please share a few (one to three) comments from your route:
We’ve seen the best corn we’ve seen all week today. We started northwest of Cedar Falls and worked north of there. We knew that the good corn would be North of Highway 20 and we found it. It was the most mature crop we’ve seen so far, also. The milk line is about halfway down. It has been surprisingly drier and gets drier as we head north. We haven’t seen any disease or storm damage to speak of.
Bean pod counts have been very good – there has been very little disease pressure. We’ve sampled a really good-looking bean crop today. It’s hard to imagine it being much better.
Preliminary Route Report with Kyle Wendland, eastern Tour consultant
What counties (with state and district) have you sampled from?
IOWA: Linn, Delaware, Fayette, Bremer, Chickasaw, Howard, Mitchell
Corn yield range: 153 to 235 bu. per acre
Corn yield average: 200.7 bu. per acre
Soybean pod count range in 3’x3’ square: 590.4 to 1,523
Soybean pod count average in 3’x3’ square: 1,170.5
Please share a few comments from your route:
This morning our route started north of Cedar Rapids, fields were wet from dew and our second and fourth sample had severe hail damage. We ran into a gentleman that said the hail on his farm came about a week ago. A lot of the ears had bruises and there was some greensnap mixed in as well. I would assume the damage we came across was the result of two separate storms, based on the distance between the two fields. As we’re working north, we’re seeing less disease pressure in corn. Yields were pretty disappointing this morning. We met up with another route, ironically, they were sitting with a 160-bu. average and had one sample that was less 100 bu. per acre, maybe due to lacking fertilizer. Overall, though, we’ve seen better ear lengths a kernel depths today.
The further north we’ve gone, the more sudden death we’ve seen. We’ve also seen a lot of white mold than we’ve seen in previous days – the spores that affect the plants are released in June; recent weather has accelerated the infection of the plants. We passed through my home town today and the bean crop looks totally different than when we set off for Crop Tour – the diseases have really affected the plant health in recent days.