Last Friday, the commodity markets made a giant leap in the upward direction, with corn up 20 cents and soybeans up 28 cents! Wow! With all the volatility going on in the markets today, this was an exceptional leap. Corn and soybeans were trending downward just a few days before.

Last Thursday ended the Pro Farmer scout tour, a 4-day look at corn and soybeans from Ohio to Nebraska and included the states of Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. I followed the tweets of some of the western scouts as they traveled from Nebraska to Minnesota and things were not looking bright in terms of yield.

Due to drought, hail storms and strong winds, corn looked smaller all across the states. The average yield in Iowa was 164 bushels per acre, a far cry from the expected 200+ bushels per acre we were all hoping for. In our area of Iowa, corn looked good according to the scouts, but they could tell there was some stress due to high temperature nights during pollination that cut the potential yield.

After reading about the tour’s results and findings, I wonder if our 172.4 bushels per acre average we determined from our fields is correct? Not good.

The scouts calculated that this year’s corn crop will be around 12.484 billion bushels per acre with an average yield of 147.9 bushels per acre. That is a lower number than expected, putting demand over supply, therefore bringing the price of corn up pretty sharply on Friday morning to $7.55! We will see what happens on Monday! (I wanted to get in on a price above $7.50, so I sold a little on the futures market…exciting)!

Soybeans ran up sharply as well, even though the tour stated it was a beautiful crop. It was more difficult to determine a yield average for soybeans because with a little rain, soybeans could fill more pods and gain more pods in these next few weeks. But nevertheless, soybeans jumped to $14.14, up $0.28 from the day before! The basis was wide, unfortunately, but a price above $13.50 cash sales was what I was looking for. Again, it will be interesting to see what happens on Monday.