Tidbits
The 3-day ProFarmer tour starts on Tuesday and will cover OH, IN, IL, IA, SD, NE and MN. State yield estimates will be issued each day. ProFarmer will release its own US national yield estimates on Friday. Out of the past 10 years, ProFarmer's corn yield estimate has been below USDA's final yield by an average of 1.5% and soybean estimates averaged 2.6% below USDA’s final yield.
In 2023, Pro Farmer's corn yield estimate was 168.1 bpa vs. USDA's final 177.3 (5.0% under error) and their bean estimate was 51.7 vs. USDA's final 50.6 bpa (2.2% over error).
In fairness to ProFarmer, you may recall USDA reduced the 2021 and 2022 corn crops by 120 million bushels and added 108 million bushels to the 2023 corn crop on their “final” 2023 crop production estimate in January 2024.