Crop Tour Faqs
Q: Why don’t you scout areas like western South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Kansas, southern Illinois?
A: We’re all for expanding Crop Tour to areas outside our current 7-state area. The manpower and logistics needed for expansion requires additional leaders and scouts in these additional areas. If you’d like to organize/lead Crop Tour in one of these areas, please contact us: editors@profarmer.com.
Q: Do you always pick the best/worst looking fields?
A: No. Scouts follow a sampling procedure that is what we call “planned randomness.” More planned randomness is added by walking 35 paces down the main rows to the sample location - this way there’s no way for scouts to tell what the crop condition will be like when they arrive at the field.
Q: How do you measure flooded/damaged fields?
A: If the field is planted and is harvestable when scouts make a stop, the field will be measured. If, after following the sampling procedure, the scouts stop in a drowned out or area of the field with no harvestable ears, that field will be measured as a “0.” Prevent plant or other field losses would be removed from the production equation, so we can’t measure those... that essentially would be “double dipping.”
Q: How many scouts enter a field?
A: Typically 1 or 2, sometimes 3 scouts enter a field to scout.
Q: What type of professions are the scouts?
A: Most scouts are farmers. “Non-farmer” scouts have included professions such as: crop adjusters, ag media, grain elevator staff, grain buyers, department of agriculture staff.
Q: How are scouts selected?
A: All scouts are volunteers. Many are Pro Farmer members, but that is not required. Crop Tour is open to anyone to participate.
Q: How do I use Crop Tour data/results?
A: When you hear results from the Tour, don’t just compare them to USDA’s August Crop Production report. Compare Tour results to the previous year’s results to figure how much bigger or smaller average yields will be. That comparison has proven to yield the most reliable analysis of fresh data.
Q: Why are your estimates on Friday different than the Crop Tour numbers?
A: Pro Farmer’s National Crop Production Estimates that are released annually on the Friday after Crop Tour take into account other factors such as crop maturity, acreage adjustments, areas outside of Crop Tour, historical differences in Tour data versus USDA’s final yields, and other factors.
Q: How do Crop Tour results compare to USDA’s Final yields?
A: We’ve studied and analyzed thousands of samples over 30 years of touring, and we’ve calculated the “historical error” of the Tour data. Simply put, we know the Tour results will be different than USDA’s final yield estimate for each state. Fortunately, we know which states the Tour measures “high” or “low,” and we know, on average, by how much.
