Even though I’m off the farm and off the air, I still keep up to date on agricultural news and markets. I still do a lot of road farming as well. I’ve written before about how I incorporated that name in to my website. Roadfarming is an old term where you drive around the country and look at the crops through your windshield and determine how the crops are going to yield.
Unscientific and inaccurate as it might be, it is a lot of fun. To gain accuracy, I refer to the USDA grain reports to see just how far off my estimates are. Well, the August USDA crop report, which is the first one of the year that gives us a good idea of how the crops will fare, shows a lot more corn than I’ve seen through the windshield.
USDA is forecasting an average national corn yield of 183.1 bushels per acre (bpa) for a national total production of 15.147 billion bushels. That would be the third highest total production ever in the U.S. Also, as of August 4, 2024, 67% of the nation’s corn is rated good to excellent condition which is 10 percentage points above last year at this time. Minnesota is expected to have an average yield of 185 bpa for a grand total production of 1.415 billion bushels from the 7.65 million corn acres in the Gopher state.
Soybean production nationally is estimated to yield 53.2 bpa for a total of nearly 4.6 billion bushels. That national yield of 53.2 would be a record. Minnesota’s soybean yield right now estimated at 49 bpa for a total of just over 359 million bushels. Minnesota average statewide last year was 48 bpa for soybeans. The national soybean production in the August report was well above trade estimates thus the prices went down after the report came out.
As a farm broadcaster, I enjoyed going through all the numbers and then calling grain traders and farm leaders to get their reaction. And every year there are those who won’t even come close to those yields because of weather. This year, the torrential rains and flooding will hurt many farms that got hit hard. The flip side is a lot of farmers got just the right amount of rain and in a timely fashion. A number of states are looking at record yields for corn including Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska and South Dakota. Record high soybean yields are expected in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas and Mississippi.
I also peruse the ag news to look for offbeat stories. I found this one written by Abigail Kurten with KCRG, Cedar Rapids. She wrote about how armadillos are moving north into Iowa. Jim Coffey, an Iowa DNR Wildlife Biologist explained to Kurten that armadillos are not new to Iowa. They’ve had reports for many, many years about armadillo sightings but yet it’s rare to see one this far north. Although, Coffey did say in the last 6 years of record keeping, they have had from 12 to 24 reported sightings. Armadillos could maybe survive a mild winter but if it is one of those brutally cold winters, they would not fare so well.
The only armadillo sighting I’ve had was at the armadillo races held in Austin, Texas, during a convention that I was attending. Racing of the miniature army tanks is quite common in Texas. The particular race I was at, the armadillos ran an oval course that was about 40 yards in length. They move fairly quickly once they’re pointed in the right direction, so the races didn’t take very long. Unlike the goldfish races I attended one year in Kansas City. There, the track was a 2 inch deep cake pan about 20 inches long. They had dividers in the cake pan so 6 goldfish could compete at once. They took about the same amount of time to go 20 inches as the armadillos that went 40 yards. And no, the winning goldfish did not get a gold medal. I don’t think this event caught on. Goldfish swallowing, however, is still a sanctioned sport. Sanctioned by frat houses on various college campuses.
