from the studios of farm journal broadcast, this is u.s. farm report.> welcome to this special edition of u.s. farm report from the 2016 profarmer crop tour. i'm tyne morgan, and here's what we're working on for you, from the field, over the next hour. we have complete coverage of the highly anticipated profarmer crop tour, including profarmer's final yield... i think the beans probably have a better shot of g above what the august estimate was than corn does in our farm journal report, we have a complete recap of the crop tour... from mud, to drought and surpises to dissapointment, consistency just wasn't there. as ag mergers continue to make waves, u-s regulators give the nod for chemchina to buy syngenta. and in john's world...

ado.> now for the news that moved the markets this week, the much anticipated profarmer took place this week, as crops ground truthed usda's latest report. and there were a few surprises along the way. profarmer pegs the 2016 national corn yield at 170 point 2. that's a major drop from usda's august 1 forecast of 175 point 1. if profarmer is right, that's also below 2014's record of 171 bushel per acre. profarmer also estimating production, at 14 point 728 billion bushels for corn. that's down from usda's august forecast of 15 point 2 billion. now, moving to soybeans, profarmer thinks we could have a record soybean crop on our hands, with the national yield pegged at 49 point 3 bushels per acre. that's above

the 2015 record by 1 point 3 bushels per acre. as for production, profarmer callign at a 4 point 0-9-3 billion bushel crop, that's just slightly higher than usda's august number.

ll that massive flooding we showed you last week in louisiana and arkansas? it's showing up in rice conditions ratings. usda calling arkansas 52 percent good to excellent, a 10 point drop in just a week. lousiana fell 4 points, to 53 percent good to excellent, but much of the crop in the southern portion of the state is already harvested. analysts were watching placements closely in the lastest cattle on feed report. it shows placements moving higher, up two percent. as for total number of cattle on head. but marketings fell in july-- to one point 7 million head down 1 percent--making it the lowest total for the month of july on record. alright, those are the headlines...meteorologist mike hoffman joins us now with weather...mike, some of these crop tour scouts battled rain this week. we'll be at the farm progress show next week, how is the weather shaping up? what thinks tyne there will be some systems moving through the northern ceara state so far some

the golf will talk more about that in the meantime there's a drought monitor and you can see it has actually shrunk in some of these bad air is the southeast the northeast has gotten a little larger but also shrinking in the western plains we go back four weeks you can kind of see where things were now watch how things improved through the central plains states into the central portions of the corn belt fact some of those areas turned pretty wet as we all know all right let's take a look at things and now i will point out across the country and multiple stations at different times over the weekend i'm recording this late in the week so have the you know with this hurricane her mean it's something we just have to watch exactly where it's going to be this is what we believe now a low pressure moving through southern florida northern tier of states cold front the northeast into the ohio valley scattered showers and thunderstorms secondary system coming through the northern plains with the same

spotty thunderstorms in the south west will have to watch the potential for heavy rains were ever this hurricane actually ends up hitting i'm thinking it's more are going to be in the northeastern portions of the gulf coast but you never know with hurricanes that could end up going a little farther west in see scattered thunderstorms in the northeast that next system moving through the northern tier of states and that will continue to move eastward with some scattered thunderstorms through the north with the remnants of the hurricane moving somewhere through the southeast will be f hour the longer range forecast alright, thanks, mike. well, how good is this crop out here? we'll first hand from the profarmer crop tour as chip flory and brian grete talk to me next. they're joined by two market analysts: pete meyer and jarod creed. it's a discussion you won't want to mix and it's happening right after hte break.

mix and it's happening right after hte break.

u.s. farm report on the road at the 2016 profarmer midwest crop

go welcome back to u s farm report as i promised we're here with some of the key scouts on the twenty sixteen pro farmer crop tour we'll start off with two from the western leg here and jared i'm going to start off with you you guys started in south dakota we know they were dealing with the dryness this year so was it disappointment to kick off the west" south dakota and drought monitor proves that. south dakota was incredibly rough making a way to nebraska i'm always one to discount localized storms and moisture and wind holy smoke green snap was a storyfor both first few days both all the way into grand island columbus over to nebraska city. and i would say on the two day stretch we easily average in our route at least twenty percent greensnap so significant problems as you advance in iowa

set up to finish well" to what our actual ear counts go to you know that green nap out there what it did is it took off what could have been a really impressive crop in nebraska because our ear counts they're not down that much from what we have traditionally counted in in nebraska but we lost a little bit on the grain length. and when you add up the the the ear counts rows around was going to see year in some of those in some of those key states on the west you're saying that's not therewell now don't forget we usually measure nebraska about fifteen bushels to light becasuse of hte irrigated acres" because we sample about forty percent irrigated 36 percent dry land is just the opposite. at 158.6 are you kidding me four percent from last year usda on august one was up one percent

get the trend we get the trend year not upand we've been talking about this tip back and you said some tip back is good and that means you're pl the right population but do you think the tipback was too much nebraska i would just say nebraksa and south dakota for sure crop is nowhere close to last year of assumptions on iowa minnesota as of today" if you want a find tipback problems all season and we saw that drought monitor and other issues that we had and in south dakota this year . on the east speaking of drought" ohio you guys started off in ohio we knew it was dry there no i went in there is very little expectations on ohio to be honest i mean over the western ohio crop eastern indiana crops i mean indiana is it is a tale of two crops quite

very impressed with the western indiana crop it's a solid as i've ever seen it. really?will it be enough to make up for the east?" start to get into illinois. i came in aroun decator and that area i didn't care for all for either a corn yield we were pulling nor the podcast" with a record crop you're supposed to have high expectations but pete you hadn;t been on the east in a few years you were there in 2014 is that crop in illinois are two thousand fourteen i don't think illinois is two thousand fourteen" even though i was out the illinois three or before crop tour and just astounded at how flat the corn wasi expected it to be much more uniform as the tops were" but it's notm there's sine variability in that crop. but it got close to 2014 it's close

was the best crop i think this year's corn crop is close it's the second best individual state corn crop i've ever seen behind 2014" if i had a put a number on it 2014 was 200 mean 195 into southern illinois didn't hurt the state" this year i think it will pull the state average down. i totally agree with that" back home to new york i will go through a bout of road eighty eight and and try to get that stuff northern that's going to be able to complensate for southern illions but i totally agree in two thousand fourteen we had a good southern illinois crop" and from what i hear anecdotally" in iowa ?what did you see there? is that enough to make up for the second best crop we're seeing in illinois?when we first got in yesterday into iowa city

blank stocks probably five to ten per two rows that we counted in each field and you wouldn't anticipate that and the plant health wasn't there either " from the ear up it's green and it looks nice and from the road it looks nice but from the ear down there are some issues. we got some stock rot and stock quality issues in there"all right so is this a one seventy five point one crop? doesn't sound like it?but we're going to

u.s. farm report on the road at the 2016 profarmer midwest crop tour is brought to you by dupont pioneer. with y ou from the word go welcome back to u s farm report so just give me your overall consensus of what you saw in

i thought it was going to be down from year ago i didn't think that it was going to be the crop that i saw ok and a lot of it goes back about as a group i think goes back to the planting season. we had one and two and in some cases three planting seasons and then we can't forget when that crop was trying to emerge it was cold it waas damp it was really struggling hard to get up and then that then the second half of june turned" e're doing at that time is we're setting the e size of the year it will put stress on it in exactly the wrong time and july during the kernel fill it wasn't oppressively hot but it was above normal well a night time temps were way above normal okay well okay maybe i should know we always talk about going on tour without having expectations without the expecttations to go into the minnesota state

obably not but i'm telling you the crop a setup to finish well at this moment state in a lot of cases if we get the conditions like we had a cool and slow cook it into the end of the year minnesota could be better than what i think right now" more eastern in minnesota where did you thinkpretty much the same thing here chips group does the bulk of it we just come up to rochester so we get just a small portion of it but i can't h anything they said their. i think that it has the potential to maybe add a little bit" but there's still a lot of questions still out on this soybean crop 175.1 national average on our handsno i do not i think the numbers probably somewhere between one seventy one seventy two the problem we have is that we added additional acres this year that nobody really goes to look at. you have nice crop in wisconsin yes and goods that all the

should say harvest checks tonight from kansas one eighty five twenty but still hundreds sought are what concerns me on there i think it's a one seventy one seventy one crop it in that area maybe one seventy two on a high end but the real question is will it make a difference in price and i do not think it makes difference in price" jared what do you think i think it is done be careful even if you drop minnesota dinging them from five to ten bushels per acre it lines up need your range not lower" yeah from this point forward everything everything one seventy four at the top one seventy four the top finished normally i like their numbers rightwell talk about the market because you know it we printed out one seventy five one number from usda in august onein the market didn't go down why because of trading one seventy two one seventy two"

pressure on the market report we saw no action from the no reaction from the trade this week you know" usually pro forma really moves the markets. it was uneventful on the market side so does the trade just not care? yeah beans thursday it did put pressure on beans but hte corn care that one seventy one seventy two i think decided ow it's a disappointment compared to the one seventy five point one in the push to higher tradign two alright petedo you think we've put this harvest low in? last week we talked about possibly we're already put the harvest low in not i i think it's going to be a long drawn out process here and i think i think your bankers have some say about too and that

ily done without five million acres this year how we get around that i don't know" but no i don't think the low is in. do you think the low is in brian?well historically big crop years he put it" big crop ahead of time you make that low build that demand base that early seasonal low and historically we also in addition to the early harvest low or seasonal low we have a greater than normal price recovery for" about thirty seconds left but brian said. we structured ourselves in a situation for a record corn demand or not low enough to actually draw and all that demand as of today" "all right so what are the closing that we're going to do

all right a quick recap closing thoughts markets now peter mayer

it's not a great prop it inadequate crop it's going to add more in the carry out which worries me stocks to use ratio of sixteen point six percent i don't see that moving much that's a concern that price the price is closer to three dollars arlight, brian grete well we know that that if it's going be a record this year the central corn belt is going to have to carry it and i think we saw a really good crops in iowa and illinois as we move out from there they declined and that's going to be chip this bean crop out there is a good crop aid is that every potential to be a forty eight point nine nine usda told us on august one the upside but if things don't finish right there under the down side and even in forty eight point nine it's not a sixteen seventeen marketing year shared and a low village of says whether corn yield one seventy one seventy five bean yield

you just mentioned we had a lot of work to do to get all that

john world as we head to john's farm. it wasn't until the twilight of my career and 6-dollar corn than we remodeled this machine shed into a warm shop with insulation and a iling. until then it had been really hard to massage the numbers to make such a seeming luxury competitive with other capital demands, like machinery that worked and mortgage payments. so i scoffed at neighbors who were too soft to work on machinery in 20-degree weather even as i simmered with envy. like all who do finally get a warm place to work in the winter, we can't imagine doing without it. not having ice-cold

batteries on power tools actually have some run time. maybe the biggest plus of all is no longer postponing needed maintenance because it was dreaded work easily ignored. as grateful as i am for this luxury, it may return less on the investment than it used to. look at these temperature predictions from climatechange.org. they show the number of 100-degree days for the past two decades and estimates of how many we'll experience in 2060 and 2100. those used to seem a long way off but i think of it as aaron and my grandson being roughly my age. these are averages, remember. so for central illinois 100 will be a familiar summer event. i don't think we should expect this to be a dry heat either. this summer illustrated that added misery. the upshot is that we think soon we'll be seriously contemplating adding air-conditioning to the shop - likely the wall units i can't

finally get a long desired warm shop just in time to want a cool shop. thanks, john. still to come, we've heard the final numbers, but what did scouts actually see during crop tour this week? we have boots on the ground for this week's farm

from the studios of farm journal broadcast, this is u.s. farm report. welcome back to this special edition of u-s farm report from the 2016 profarmer crop tour. we have much more ahead the next 30 minutes. our farm journal report is groundtruthing, going behind the scenes with scouts to see what they saw on the tour this week. in customer support, with these low prices, could we see a bump in c-r-p acres next year? and all this talk about crops, we need some balance. so we'll check in with baxter black to imagine a life without cows. now for the headlines, monsanto company stocks rose earlier this week on news they could be one step closer to a merger with bayer. sources say a deal could be clinched within the next two

made headway this week, as the two companies discussed and hashed out issues like purchase price and termination fee. according to people familiar with the matter merger agreement could happen anytime, as the companies c-e-o's held what they call constructive meetings. but those same sources caution negotiatons could fall apart or be delayed. also on the merger front, syngenta and chem china getting go-ahead nod from u-s regulators. shares surged this week after the committee on stment in the united states approved the buyout by chem china on monday, boosting chanes the largest foreign aqcuistion ever by a chinese company will go thorugh. iowa senator chuck grassley is continuting to raise concers over the chemchina-syngenta deal, calling it alarming. grassley heads the senate judiciary committee and just this week he announced he's hosting a hearing on the wave of ag company mergers. it will be held in late september and it's

urrent mergers on teh table, but current trend of consolidation within the chem and seed industries. as dairy farmers across the country battle low milk prices, usda is trying to help. the department says it will buy 20 million dollars of cheese, or 11 million pounds, from private inventories. they are donating the cheese to food assitance programs. that will help reduce the hefty supplies weighing on prices. currently the cheese surplus is at an all-time high. usda also recently extended the deadlien to sign up for the dairy margin protection program. it's pushed back to december 16. john deere is laying off 145 workers. that's after the company announced it's slowing production on both tractors and combines to reflect the current demand. most of those cuts will come from their iowa manufacturing sites with 115 in waterloo and 30 in davenport. the layoffs will be effective the end of september. that's in addtition to the close to 2 thousand layoffs the company has

u-s and canada. if you're planning on attending the farm progress show in boone iowa this year, you may want to pencil us in. we'll be at the show the first two days, doing live tapings. on tuesday, we'll be at the channel booth from 11:30 to one. i have an impressive line-up of analysts, including joe vaclavik, matt bennett and angie setzer. we'll break down these crazy market prices. we will be serving lunch, but it's first come first serve. then on wednesday, join us at the asgrow dekalb booth at 1 o'clock. chip flory and machinery pete will join me to discuss yields and equipment. plus, we're giving away a yeti cooler to one lucky visitor. we hope to see you there! that's it for news...meteorologist mike hoffman joins us now with a longer- range look at this forecast. mike, you still thinking we'll be cooler than normal over the next month in much of the nation's midsection? . thanks tyne probably just buy a little bit in the middle of the country oh we do believe that there will be some cooler intrusions of air but also times

the month of september on a warm side cause watch what happens with the jet stream again see how it is mainly through the northern terrorist states and the reason is ridge can a building up through the middle of the country pretty good for coming in out west you folks are going to cool down and it will be cool in a much of the northeast with that trough there but the ridge building up by friday that could bring some heat before things start to get cut back down again with that trough trying to dig in farther north so the september temperatures is a 90 day outlook above normal for the southern mississippi valley in the entire east coast as well as the southwest little bit a below normal area of far northern plains and probably just slightly below in the central and northern plains october temperatures though when we go back the other way i don't show any below normal areas above normal for most of the country except the southwest november kind of same idea was a little bit of cooler air coming into the far northern plains but most of the country above normal and

d chance of hurricanes and tropical storms and above normal through the northern tier of states tyne thanks, mike. if you're just now joining us this weekend, we're at the 2016 profarmer crop tour where things wrapped up thursday in minnesota. the crop tour is closely watched every year, but this year, most tuned in to see if usda could actually be right and we do have a record corn and soybean crop on our hands. the crop tour captures thousands of samples from seven states. the and finally ending in minnesota. and on the east, it was ohio to indiana, then through illinois, iowa and minnestoa. so what did the scouts see? and is it a record crop? that's this week's farm journal report from mud in iowa.... to dryness in south dakota...

dissapointment in nebraska...

there's just a little bit of room to the downside, to the downside on teh south dakota corn yield> and in ohio, it's no secret dryness robbed some farmers of yield, as for indiana's soybeans, bernard says there's still time...

out mud, it is night and day difference this year> with lodged corn making it difficult to steer through green fields. chip flory says it's the irrigated corn yield that surpised him the most.

they have pegged on nebraska. but soybeans are a different story. our crop was better than 2015 than 2014. so i think this is as good or even better than 2014."> but the soybeans are showing glimpses of dissapointment as the crop finishes out. there's a lot of beans here, so how the sudden death is going to impact is going to be tough to tell."> that's changing darin

these beans that the top end may have gotten hurt."> despite variability, profarmer says we still have a big corn crop on our hands. and while the verdict is still out on soybeans, profarmer thinks it has the potential to be a record breaker... scouts ended the tour right here in minestoa, filds behind me don't have htewow factor they had last year. scouts say they didnt' see the record crop farmers saw here in 2015. and they also balttled white mold and others diesease pressure they say could bring hte final yield number down. alright, up next, john phipps... crb-- a good idea or not?

a good idea or not? next, john phipps... crb-- a good idea or not?

week, but that's the topic of this week's customer support.

the conservation reserve program. "in today's grain pricing structure, the only way to make a profit is to reduce input costs or produce more bushels. i decided to put some land into the crp program, to improve the soil quality for my children and it should reduce the grain supply hopefully increasing prices. a local farmer commented that he did not think he should have to compete with the us government for land. what do you think?" bryan, up until this year, i didn't think about the crp much at all. our farm is almost all high-productivity soils and we only have a few odd acres of highly erodible land or other tracts that seemed suitable for crp. in addition, the payment has been way below going rents. however, as you have mentioned, your experience may vary. i have heard farmers comment that in other areas crp payments are not

land to rent. i'll work on a more complete answer, but right now, i just want point out three things that could complicate this debate in the near future. first, the pollinator program. we just signed up a handful of awkward acres at the end of one field just to get rid of the hassle of farming it. when i agreed to the contract this spring i was patting myself on the back for doing my environmental duty and taking a payment lower than the rent, but if rents do soften my contract deal, in addition to a stewardship improvement. another factor is i expect calls for some mechanism from the government to reduce acres and production, since we likely will have monstrous carryovers. the crp has been one tool we used in the past to do this, and coupled with targeting acres that could help mitigate nutrient runoff,

e have a large cohort of baby boomers entering retirement age, and if rents do drop, more crp bids could be hard to beat. my bottom line is we'll be talking crp a lot this winter. definitely something to watch. thanks, john. stay with

tour this year, our show's been a lot about crops and not much about cows. so, we're heading out west to visit baxter black. can you imagine a world without cows? in the last five centuries the domestic bovine has mooed itself into virtually every county in the western hemisphere. but, for the sake of

ing latvians, amazonian dart blowers, or a powerful vegetarian brokerage firm in figi who did not bring cattle into the country. well, my first observation is, there would be no big macs! beef, milk or cheese would not be available in abundance. would we try to domesticate deer, buffalo, elk, wild goats? would we be hearing, "pork, it's what's for dinner!" "where's the mutton?" "goat, the other white meat!" "got okra?" i'll have some "certified angus drumstick." "i'll have a fungus burger with shredded styrofoam and a side of those thistle poppers." "does your horsemeat pudding come with splashguards?" "i'll have some cold mutton gravy with hair in it." i'm assuming goat milk would become the drink of choice. chicken would become the biggest source

shetland pony tenderloin would be served at good steakhouses. our eating habits would become boring to many epicureans. they'd be yearning for a big, succulent, juicy, mouth-watering, medium rare, right off the grill what? gizzard? camel hump? dog leg, cornish hamster? we'd be importing insulin made from yak pancreas. leather upholstery, boots and baseballs would all be made of augahyde. roy rogers would have stayed in iowa and become the soybean balladeer. trevor brazile would have become a professional golfer, and i would be a former reptile veterinarian and swineherd poet: ode to the pig who brings us ribs and pork oh, how i long to

out there. thanks, baxter. to hear more of baxter's humor online, just visit baxter black dot com. when we come back,

e. the most trusted name in farm equipment. welcome back to tractor tales. sheaffer (shafer) introduced us to this 1937 classic br while visiting his place in south central michigan. rusty told us he finds this br very helpful around his property. i use it quite low but you know because its small and its handy to move stuff around i bought it like this guy that we knew restored it quite a few years ago lynne and it set in the shed and set

really want to sell it and finally says well sell it to you in so i just thought i had to have it in and bought it i did a little bit of cleaning up the carburetor and stuff like that it had been settin for a while but well there is just a standard tractor for a farm in which they came out with a bo and that was like an orchard tractor but it didn't have no air stacks or nothing and then they come all this it was just the standard tractor oh just enjoy it and pull wagons around and stuff like maybe someday a paint in pain it again i don't know but this enjoy it i like taken it shows it's easy to haul it's light and little bought it basically like it is in other than cleaning up in all the carburetor and i worked on the magness a little bit to get it going in that all we done to it and this back tank was your start thing you started it on

on there you could still do it. this weeknd's country church salute goes to the lyster luthern church of nelson, wisconsin. the congregation is celebrating hteir 150th anniversary this year. it was started by norwedgian americans in the 1860s and they say the church still stands today as a testament to their faith and strength. the congregation today is strong today, with 417 baptized and 261 confirmed. our thanks to myrna johnson for sharing their story. when we

in the spirit of crop tour week, we're showing some pictures from throughout the week.. many of these courtesy of twitter. jarod creed says to him, nebraska corn yield might be about as disappointing as

rdo says the corn looks great from the road in cedar county, but once you get in the field, it's horrible. he says beans were just as bad with very few pods. josh merryman made a stop just south of carroll, iowa. he says thsi field yielded an impressive 199 bushels pe acre, but could have gone 230 if it wasn't for greensnap. bob found more than just your typical insects you find in fields this week... it's ear frogs. and just in case you were worried the scouts don't have any fun, they say johnson county iowa corn needed some juggling, coming in at 227 bushel per acre. and in indiana, just days after our scouts were there, a tornado ripped through near kokomo flattening corn fields and even flattneing some farm builodings. if you have pictures to sumbit, you can do that to mailbag at u-s farm report dot com or on facebook or twitter. for all of us at u-s farm report, i'm tyne morgan. thank you for watching u-s farm report. be sure to join us right

the stuidios. have a great weekend, everyone.

a live look at "in some cases, the water was higher than 2008. " recovery begins today after historic flooding in several towns along the turkey river in northeast iowa. a new multi-million dollar project at the university of iowa hopes to improve at least two programs on campus. and a des moines native turned emmy-winning actress gets to celebrate her very own day. from your 24 hour news source, this is the kcrg-tv9 saturday morning news. good morning and thanks for joining us. we begin with first alert storm team meteorologis t britley ritz. the showers and storms will become more isolated through the morning and early