Heading into the the 2026 Pro Farmer Crop Tour, there was a real chance this year's tour wouldn't produce much of a story. The crop had been talked up for months, and the crop condition numbers coming in from the road seemed to be confirming it. Instead, scouts found a season full of surprises, and not all of them good.
"I just don't feel like that I saw enough evidence to make that happen," says Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk, who led the western leg of the tour, on the possibility of a national average corn yield near 180 bu. per acre.
Instead, what scouts found was a good crop, just not one that escaped weather issues this year. As a result, Pro Farmer's national yield estimate, which they release every year after the Pro Farmer Crop Tour concludes, came with a major surprise. This year's national corn yield could not only be below 180 bu. per acre, but according to Pro Farmer, it could be under 175 bu. per acre, which could have major implications on corn prices in the months ahead. However, when it comes to soybeans, scouts found the potential for a record crop.
Pro Farmer's Final Estimate: A Surprisingly Low Number
As scouts spanned across the Corn Belt sampling fields, no state on tour came in with a corn yield over 200 bu. per acre this year, though Minnesota came close. Instead, the I-states told the story, with samples coming in well below USDA's current projections. Illinois and Indiana landed in the 180-bushel range, and Iowa came in at just under 194 bu. per acre.
That field data fed into Pro Farmer's crop estimates, released Friday after the markets closed. Those estimates go beyond what scouts found on their routes, also accounting for crops outside the tour's path, and the final numbers came in surprisingly low on corn.
Pro Farmer pegged the national corn yield at 173.2 bushels an acre, with production at 15.3 billion bushels. That's well below USDA's current corn yield estimate of 180.7 bushels an acre and 16 billion bushels of production.
Iowa Wasn't the Heavy Lifter Everyone Expected
The biggest surprise of the week, according to Flory, came out of Iowa. Pro Farmer's tour pegged the state's corn crop down 2.24% from last year, a sharp contrast to USDA's estimate of a 2.9% increase.
"We expected Iowa was going to be that heavy lifter to get us up and maybe give us a chance to make a 180 [bu. per acre] for a national average corn yield," Flory says.
