I have no idea how they will come in with anything much more than 40 bushel/acre next week.
Pod counts are so low, and that with the combined 5 year average of pod weights(since they don't weight them officially until Oct.) I have a yield probably between 39-40, and dropping more in October because of below average pod weights.
I did a correlation study with pod counts from the pro farmer tour vs the usda pod counts in sept.
Pro farmer counts a 3x3 foot square(9 square feet) while the usda does a 18 square feet plot.
I took the ending average pod counts of the usda in the states of (IA,IL,IN,OH,MN, NE) back to 2000, and then compared to them with the pod counts of pro farmer back to 2000.
Overall the ending average of pod counts for those states from the USDA came in about 50% higher than pro farmers average for those states. Wetter august and early sept though resulted in pod counts up to 57% more than pro farmer in the end, while dry August and early sept resulted in only 40% more than pro farmer from aborted and flat pods. The lowest was in 2003 when pod counts were only 35% more than what pro farmer counted.
This year pro farmer came in with a simple average for those states of around 1100 pod per 3x3 foot square. If I use 50% more pods as a starting point then the usda should come in somewhere near 1650 pods with beans per 18 square feet which is on the low side of the last 12 years. The only 2 lower years would be last year, and 2003.
If i then take the prior 5 year average of pod weights and do some simple math with the pod weight I came up with, I have these 6 states simple average at 42.22 bushel/acre.
Then you have to take into account that those states average is typically 2-3 bushels MORE than the national average over the last 12 years, I then have a September report yield of between 39.2-40.2 , with a midpoint of 39.7 for the Sept report.
Remember the October report will likely be even lower because I don't see how the final podweight will be more than the current 5 year average with all the dryness during August and early Sept. I'll have an update on that in a couple weeks.
