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2015 Corn Belt Crop Tour begins Friday

12 states will be visited

By Diego Flammini, Farms.com

The best way for farmers to gauge how crops in other parts of the United States are performing and anticipate any future actions would be to visit the fields themselves.

Farmers are much too busy for that, so that’s where Farms.com comes in.

From Friday, June 26th to Saturday, July 11th, Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist for Farms.com Risk Management and his team will take part in the 4th annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour.

The three-week tour will visit 12 U.S. states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

“The 2015 4th annual U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour is unlike any other Midwest crop tour and its main objective is not to count corn kernels in the middle of August,” said Agostino. “But rather, to try and anticipate the size of the corn and soybean crops early in turn to help the farmer anticipate where prices are headed.”

Corn field

During the tour, Agostino will answer some of the burning questions farmers have, including if all the corn and soybean acres have been planted after the wettest May in 121 years.

While in each state, Agostino will interview farmers and provide first-hand analysis of the successes and challenges facing this year’s crop. A video will then be posted online for future access.

There will be two end-of-tour events where farmers can network and sit in on speaker sessions.

The first will take place Tuesday, July 7th in Williamsburg, Iowa at the Kinze Innovation Center. The second will happen at the Penta Tillage Plant in Glencoe, Ontario on Tuesday, July 14th.

On Monday, July 13th, a video will be posted summarizing Agostino’s findings and opinions going forward.

Tell us the kinds of things you’d like to see come out of the U.S. Corn Belt Crop Tour. What questions would you like answered?


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The weather risk premium in the Ag complex is sending corn, wheat and soybean futures lower on month-end selling ahead of the market moving USDA quarterly grain stocks and acreage reports on June 30th.

Instead, funds were chasing and sending tech stocks higher with the S&P 500/NASDAQ indexes setting new all-time record highs!

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Feed in the form of soybean meal futures for livestock producers got cheaper, trading to new contract lows.

The Stats Canada seeded acreage update was bullish canola and wheat.