Crop Tour Finds Huge Minnesota, Iowa Crops, but Diseases Lurk

By Julie Ingwersen

ROCHESTER, Minnesota, Aug. 21 (Reuters) – Prospects for corn and soybean crops in Iowa and Minnesota are the strongest in at least 22 years, scouts on an annual tour of top grain-producing states said on Thursday, but diseases already lurking in fields could limit yields at harvest.

The four-day Pro Farmer crop tour, which concluded in Rochester, Minnesota, on Thursday, found above-average production potential in each of the seven Midwestern states it covered. Several states boasted the highest projected corn yields and soybean pod counts in tour records dating to 2003.

About 100 participants spent the week scouting more than 1,500 corn and soybean fields in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.

Grain traders have been monitoring the tour’s findings to gauge the size of the 2025 harvest in the United States, the world’s largest corn exporter and No. 2 soybean supplier.

The tour projected the corn yield in Iowa, the biggest U.S. corn grower, at 198.43 bushels per acre (bpa), above the 2024 tour average of 192.79 bpa, and Minnesota’s corn yield at 202.86 bpa, a sharp jump from 164.90 in 2024.

The yield estimates for both states were the highest in the tour’s 22-year data set.

“The Minnesota (corn) crop was way better than last year. It’s a good, solid crop, with plenty of moisture,” said Sherman Newlin, an analyst with Risk Management Commodities who was on the tour.

The four-day tour, which does not project soybean yields, estimated the number of soybean pods in a 3-by-3-foot (91cm x 91cm) square in Iowa at an average of 1,384.38 pods, while Minnesota’s average count was 1,247.86 pods. Both were the highest in tour data.

“The story of the tour is the massive pod counts we are seeing,” said Ted Seifried, chief strategist for Zaner Ag Hedge and a scout on the tour.

However, the same warm and wet weather that helped promote crop growth this summer has also fostered the spread of yield-robbing diseases in the two states, particularly Iowa.

“Sudden death syndrome and white mold could be limiting factors for reaching today’s scouted potential” in soybeans, said Tim Gregerson, a Nebraska farmer on the tour.

Scouts noted southern rust, a fungal disease, in Iowa and Minnesota corn, although it was too soon to know its impact on yields.

“The crop still needs another four to five weeks to finish (growing),” Gregerson said.

(Reporting by Julie Ingwersen in Rochester, Minnesota; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Janane Venkatraman)