The East is a Beast and West is a Wild Card Headlined Pro Farmer Crop Tour in Ohio and South Dakota

As Pro Farmer Crop Tour scouts set out Monday, Ohio didn’t disappoint.

“We've seen some pretty good corn so far along my route this morning,” says Brian Grete, editor of Pro Farmer, as he started the tour on Monday. “It looks a little bit better - on those handful of stops that we've made - than what Ohio corn normally is.”

In the East, scouts saw a soggy start as they geared up to wade through the muddy fields, a good sign for soybeans in August.

“We're out here in northeast Ohio and far northern Ohio, and they got some rains,” says Grete. “So, they have moisture now to finish out crops."

That's optimism in a state Grete says typically is hit or miss.

“It looks like there's quite a few hits this year, at least on the early sampling so far this morning on day one,” he adds.

The rains were a welcome sign for the soybeans in Ohio, as much of the crop is still in the flowering stage

“It has the potential to add some pods, if it does get these rains and they continue on,” says Grete. “I think the pod counts in general are pretty solid, and have been pretty consistent through our handful of stops so far this morning."

While the East showed the potential for a record yield in portions of Ohio, South Dakota scouts saw conditions that were a bit more mixed.

“Coming out of Sioux Falls directly, they've had pretty good rainfall," says Sherman Newlin, a commodity broker with Risk Management Commodities, who’s a scout on the western leg of the tour this year. “Corn was pretty good. The ground was still kind of dry, but what we saw was about 190 bu. per acre and pretty good looking ears, pretty good looking stalks.”

But as the scouts moved further west in South Dakota, conditions deteriorated. Turner County, for one, showed scars from dryness.

“We've run into some drier soils right here in this field, and this field came in at 136 bu. per acre,” says Newlin. “So, that's a little bit more like I think a lot of people were expecting and in the drier parts of South Dakota.”

But those scars were not as deep as some expected heading into the tour this week.

“Looking at the USDA number and how much they dropped corn on this August report, I'm kind of wondering if maybe they have gone a little bit too far,” says Ted Seifried, Zaner Ag Hedge, who’s also scouting on the western leg this week.

It's the story of haves and have nots when it comes to rain in South Dakota, with areas further north and west of the state in worse shape.

“You can really see the areas that just missed out on the rains, and we were just talking to the farmer here. He said he got a pretty decent rain about two weeks ago, which saved them,” adds Seifried.

Some fields are showing cracks, but Seifried says the potential for South Dakota's soybeans to produce is still there.

“Soybeans, I think it's a pretty good crop,” he says. “The first two stops soybeans looked pretty good from where we're standing. It’s obviously a little bit drier here. Soybeans are further along. Pods are filling up pretty nicely."

Seifried  says his outlook on southern South Dakota’s soybean crop potential is surprisingly promising.

The day one Pro Farmer Crop Tour results were released at 8 p.m. Central on Monday. Here are the results from each leg of the tour.