Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / Northern Section of the 2026 Crop Tour (SD, ND, MN) with Estimates

Transcript

Northern Section of the 2026 Crop Tour (SD, ND, MN) with Estimates · Professional Ag Marketing Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're locked in to the Green Market Talk Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Fast updates, market movers, and the green news you need right now.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trading commodity futures and options involve substantial risk of loss, but is not suitable for all investors.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: This year's crop tour is sponsored by Green Key Ag, a plant nutrition company that takes your fields to their max potential.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Please contact Noah at 712-441-5446.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Today is August 7th, and we're going to talk about the Northern Crop Tour today.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I got Mike Miner with me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: How are you doing, Mike, today?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing today?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing good.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing good.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yesterday we had uh we sent out more of our team uh to the northern part of uh eastern South Dakota, um, some in southwest Minnesota and some up in the the southwest, southeast side of North Dakota.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: And Mike, um, I I see you went that way.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us a little about what you saw?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I worked my way from the Sioux Falls area up through Dell Rapids, Trent, South Dakota, near the first stop, kind of worked my way towards Coleman, Rutland, uh just south of Brookings, and then kind of ended up north of Brookings about an hour towards Clear Lake.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh each one of the stops that I had made, um, you know, that that's pretty much home-based for me, right?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right around Madison, Coleman.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So very familiar with the ground uh history.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the overall day when I started, uh just north of Sioux Falls, we've missed a lot of the rain.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh total for the year.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's only sitting at about six inches of rain on his crop since it's been planted, so very, very low moisture in it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you could tell.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: We checked the most extreme examples to the worst examples, and the worst samples came out on fields at 130.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Very bad, but it was a lower day corn as well.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, 95 type day stuff, so very low.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: The best fields that he has we checked around it came in at about 200.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, last year those would have been 230, 240, so big decreases year over year.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: The poor fields, lighter fields really showed stress.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: The better fields were holding on, but uh you could just tell the the overall potential, max potential just wasn't there.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Not a ton of tip back yet, maturity-wise, it was still a little bit behind.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like that one that you can see.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was 108-day corn, so you can't really tell on the end what it started to abort yet.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: As you worked north, and that's really good ground, that's like primo South Dakota dirt right there, but they've just missed the rains, and it gets worse to the east into Minnesota there a little bit, Pipestone, it gets better as you move west a little bit as they caught some more rains before they kind of stopped.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: When I headed north there, the conditions would improve.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did get a little bit greener.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said the fun side application, northern, up towards Brookings, got a little bit better.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: However, once you got up to about like that um, you know, Rutland uh Brookings area, it it really struggled from the field, from the from the field, even inside of it, the conditions were really good.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not many signs of stress at all.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Even light spots didn't look too bad compared to what it could have been.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um moment you opened up there and looked at it, huge tip back.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So tip back was very prevalent.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um last year it would have been a 225 area on everything to 235, and a lot of my samples were 160 to 170.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So big cur decrease year over year there in eastern South Dakota.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Once I got north of Brookings, all those stops looked a lot better.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um near Clear Lake, uh it was around 200 bushel corn at each stop.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: The years were full, it was fantastic corn, um, better, much better conditions.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: One of the big differences there was just overall rainfall.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned that they only had about six inches on the rain on the corn crop around around uh Trent there, around Dell's uh year to uh from since we planted it.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Once you got to Clear Lake there, they had a five-inch rain on its own June 3rd.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that may have been detrimental a little bit to the stands and and some things like that that you could tell.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was pretty decent.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh but you could just tell it was a greener crop.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: They had better subsoil moisture last year when they started to, it was wetter down south, further just south of Brookings, it was dry last fall as well.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you could just tell bottom leaves were pretty much gone, but the green the stock was still green in almost everything I went and saw yesterday around eastern South Dakota.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not gonna be the same big western crop that we knew we had last year.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we knew that coming into yesterday, but the results were disappointing compared to what I thought they would be, Jaden.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: So my take home right there is probably between Sioux Falls and Brookings, looking pretty rough.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Once you get north of Brookings, it starts to look better.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, exactly.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And a little bit more west was a little bit better for a while.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Even Lake County, you get on the western side of the county, uh, west of 81, they had received a lot more rains.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: You go east of it, they had not.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So throughout the year, anyways, uh a little bit different story for that area, I would say.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: But um nonetheless, it seemed like the folks who had the really good dirt didn't get a ton of rain this year, so it's still trying to hold on.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: The folks with a little bit lighter dirt, they've kind of got the rains throughout a couple of those counties there.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Moody and Lake are even without I mean price, I I think you're gonna be in ECO territory pretty hard on both of those county yields at this point.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, Mike, when you look at South Dakota's yield as a whole state, uh came in at a 171 last year, which was a record, a 164 the year before.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you kind of put South Dakota this year?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So when I start to play with the numbers a little bit, one of the things I've noticed is that it it's not gonna be in that 165 to 171 range like we've had the past couple years.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I start to look at that state-by-state breakdown and start to really influence the yield, I see something much closer to a 150.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, here's the thing, I can wreck that number compared to what the USTA has.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: I can wreck that number compared to other estimates.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: To be able to move the overall yield takes a lot.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So as you can see, I was pretty extreme there at 150.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: It bumps a yield down for the US, but not a ton.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's same for North Dakota as well.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: With some of the samples that we had pulled yesterday up by North Dakota, you know, as you go to Wishick a little bit east, a little bit more rainfall, better conditions, almost 200 bushel corn.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like some of the corn is still holding on pretty good as you move towards Fargo, for example.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So a little bit worse to the north and west, obviously, but um North Dakota there may be uh hearing pretty poor things out of it, but some of the samples we took in the southeast side of the state were pretty good yesterday.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we did not get north, which uh would have been a little bit more interesting there, I think, as well.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, 155 South Dakota, something like that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll let you decide on the final number, but uh North Dakota well into the 140s there as well, I think, Jaden.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: What was your numbers that you had come up with?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Mike, so I I I kind of agree with that from what I've been talking to with producers in South Dakota.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm thinking around that 150 level for South Dakota mid-150s and North Dakota there.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um if you just look at crop conditions in general, um, it's pretty rough, you know, about 17% below last year.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um in North Dakota.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: I would say the heavily you know weighted region where there's a lot of corn produced actually isn't all that bad.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And you touched on that earlier, but uh nonetheless, both states are gonna be well below last year for sure.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for your time today, Jaden.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks for thanks for coming on, Mike.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: As a reminder to anyone, please check out our crop tour on Twitter and also on YouTube.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Keep following along, we'll come out with a national yield estimate later today.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.