Aerial Crop Tour - Recap

Yesterday kicked off the first annual aerial crop tour conducted by Professional Ag Marketing. The flyover of the August crop tour route started in our hometown of Luverne, MN, flying southwest into Nebraska, east through Iowa, Illinois, and into Ohio before coming back to Luverne. We wanted to get a preemptive look into what the crop conditions are before we drove the route at the beginning of August.

The Western Corn Belt continues to have drought concerns despite precipitation picking up over the last week. Crops looked solid as we came south out of Luverne before we ran into some dryness as we moved over top of Sioux County in Iowa. Things started to green up as we continued over southeastern South Dakota and into northeastern Nebraska before getting over the dryest ground we saw of the day. South of Sioux City and over the Loess Hills crops started to look dry and barren, granted, they’ve really struggled with drought in this area of the Corn Belt. Within 20 minutes of these observations, we saw the completely opposite end of the spectrum as we got over York. Rain over the last few days has really helped this area take a turn for the better, something they’ve been needing for a while. Moisture continued as we kept moving east over the Missouri River and along the southern border of Iowa. Crops looked solid in this area as we flew into Illinois.

Illinois doesn’t seem to be experiencing the drought trend that the rest of the Corn Belt is. As we crossed the Mississippi River, the crop started to look very good, although it seemed as though there wasn’t a field in Illinois without water sitting in it. The further we moved into Illinois, the more water there was, as they found even more rain in these last three days. As we flew into Indiana, things weren’t exactly the same. The western part of the state was similar, wet, but as we got into the state, things started to dry up a little bit. Crops started to look a little barren and patchy in the eastern part of the state and over the border into Ohio. Making a U-turn after a short time over Ohio and getting into the northern parts of the “I” states is where the crops also took a turn. Coming back through Northwestern Indiana and Northeastern Illinois, we found some encouraging-looking crops from above. Moisture started to show again as we got into north-central Illinois, southwest of Lake Michigan. The last stint of our journey across the northern half of Iowa and back into southwest Minnesota crops continued to impress and gave us an even more promising outlook on the 2026 crop year.

Just to recap the trip, we saw a lot of diverse growing conditions throughout the Corn Belt. Some of these places struggling with drought did find some rain over the last week, which should help them carry through this heat for the next week. The Eastern Corn Belt may struggle in Indiana and Ohio where they have been a little drier and could use some rain with the same thing going on in northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota. Illinois could break out with the coming heat and in those areas that didn’t get too much rain could take off as we head towards tasseling in the next month or month and a half. We plan to do another flyover outlook here in the next three to four weeks to guys eyes on the crop before we get boots on the ground when we do our final crop tour in August.