Water Street Solutions Aerial Crop Tour /30/15

Water Street Solutions Aerial Crop Tour 2015 7/30/15

1 When we left Peoria, IL, we flew northwest to Geneseo, IL. The crop was as I expected for the first half of the route. The second half from Toulon, IL to Geneseo, IL, the crop was really in great shape.

2 Then we flew northwest from Geneseo, IL to Mason City, IA. Of that route, about 2/3 was in excellent shape with areas of challenges mixed in.

6 While some areas in northeast Iowa said they had gotten too much rain early, much of the area actually looked pretty good.

9 The first surprise or ah-ha moment came while flying from Mason City, IA to Spencer, IA, southwest to Storm Lake, IA, and southeast to the I-80 corridor. We saw good crops, but there were holes and yellow spots. There were areas you could tell had too much rain early. It had affected the stands and had created denitrification. That was a bit of a surprise because I had heard the northwest corner of Iowa was pristine. I think it s good, but it s not perfect.

14 Then we flew south of I-80 in Iowa on our way to Kirksville, MO. We saw nothing but crops that were late, had holes or denitrification.

16 Moving east from Kirksville, MO to Jacksonville, IL was also discouraging. As we got toward Jacksonville, IL we saw a lot of devastated crops: denitrification, areas where ponding had taken place so there was a lack of a stand.

19 Then it was a combination of good and bad as we continued east from Jacksonville, IL to Terre Haute, IN. There were stretches that were very good, and stretches that were not. I think that had a lot to do with the early season rains. The areas that looked better probably caught less rain this spring only 3 inches of rain in a night compared to 8 or 12 inches.

23 As we moved northeast from Terre Haute, IN to Kokomo, IN, that area was devastated. There isn t much to say about this area in a positive light. The area just had too much rain in May and June.

25 Heading back west from Kokomo, IN to where we started in Peoria, IL was not good, either. This whole area also took too much rain early in the May-June timeframe. It left the crop not only in need of nitrogen but with holes in it.

3 Key Take-away Points: 1. Iowa/northwest Iowa wasn t as good as I expected it to be. It was still good, but just not perfect like I had thought before taking this tour. 2. The 5 million acres of beans mainly in southern Iowa, Missouri, parts of Illinois that were late getting planted and the government said they finally got planted what we saw on the tour was that a lot of those beans were really immature. I question how much they are going to yield. Many of them were 3-4 inches tall. It was a situation where, yes, they got planted but are they going to yield 10, 15 bushel? What will they actually yield by the time we get to harvest? I think that 5 million acres of beans will have a hard time averaging over a 20-bushel average at most, if not less. 3. Water Street typically takes this crop tour in August, but this year we took it a bit earlier, on July 30 th. What that means is: this crop will only start to look worse as time goes on. There will be more deterioration as we get further into the growing season. The plant uses a lot of nitrogen after it pollinates, after mid-silk. I would expect that the fields that are yellow in these pictures where denitrification had already set in those fields will only become more yellow as the weeks go by. Plus, disease is going to be a real factor not only in the beans with sudden death syndrome and possibly white mold, if we have a wet August but beans are made in August, so they will need rain. There was too much rain in many areas of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, parts of Michigan, and with a shallow-rooted crop, dry weather will hurt us in a different way. It will hurt grain fill, not because of disease but because of lack of moisture and the transfer of an assimilation of nutrients. That s a real issue. For the corn, I think anthracnose is a real possibility. We may see stalk rots late-season, or leaf blights like northern leaf blight. With the type of year we ve had so far, a lot of people have not sprayed. Fungicide treatments are going to be a must. It will be interesting to see how this crop fares as we go through a large nitrogen pull as we get into grain fill in the middle of August, heading toward fall. It will be interesting to see how the corn plant and the bean plant battle any weather concerns or disease. They re already weakened in many areas of the Grain Belt and therefore, they re going to be sensitive to any coming environment that is less than ideal. Summary: To sum up the three points: 1) Iowa conditions weren t as good as I thought, 2) the 5 million acres of beans have a long way to go and I don t know if they ll make much, and 3) normally we take this crop tour a little bit later, so as it deteriorates, I expect the crops to become worse as we move through August. All in all, I think the national average for the corn crop is under 160 bu/acre. I think the soybean crop is going to have a hard time making 43.5 bu/acre. Because of what I saw on this crop tour, I think prices will need to go higher. -Darren Frye

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