Pro Farmer Crop Tour 2026
How good has the tour actually been?
Every tour since 2015, against the crop that actually came in. Bar shows how far the tour's final corn number landed from USDA's final yield: left of the line means the tour called it too small, right means too big.
Over the last 11 tours (2015–2025), Pro Farmer's final corn number missed USDA's eventual final by 4.1 bushels on average. USDA's own August forecast missed by 3.1. USDA came closer in 7 of those 11 years.
The tour has also leaned one way: it came in under the final yield in 7 of 11 years, and in those years it finished 5.3 bushels low on average. Across all 11, the net lean is 2.6 bushels low. That is a real tendency, not a rule — it ran high in 3 of them, the widest by 5.5 bushels, and it landed exactly on the final once.
Set the number above against what the tour's own record says to expect of it. Across 11 tours it has finished below the crop that actually came in 7 times and above it 3, landing on it exactly once. 7 of those 11 misses fall between -5.2 and +0.9 bushels, the widest between -9.5 and +5.5, and it has landed within 6 bushels of the final crop in 10 of 11 years. That is a count of what happened, not a forecast: it is not a reason to adjust the tour's figure, and adding its average lean back on tested worse than leaving it alone.
| Year | Tour | USDA Aug | Final | Tour vs final — bushels per acre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2025Note on 2025A government shutdown killed the October reports, so this crop year rests on one fewer USDA forecast round than the others. | 182.7 | 188.8 | 186.5 | |
| 2024 | 181.1 | 183.1 | 179.3 | |
| 2023 | 172.0 | 175.1 | 177.3 | |
| 2022 | 168.1 | 175.4 | 173.3 | |
| 2021 | 177.0 | 174.6 | 177.0 | |
2020Note on 2020The August 10 derecho flattened millions of Iowa acres. USDA's August forecast, approved August 12, was based on conditions as of August 1 and so contains none of that damage — the report says so on its face. The tour walked those fields the following week, though it ran in modified form that year, with scouts reporting from the road instead of meeting up at night, so 2020 is not measuring quite the same exercise as the others. It is the year the two numbers diverge most, and it carries more weight than any other year in comparisons drawn from this table. | 177.5 | 181.8 | 172.0 | |
2019Note on 2019USDA changed how it builds the August corn and soybean forecast this year, dropping the August field-measurement survey. August numbers from 2019 on are not built the same way as the years before. | 163.3 | 169.5 | 168.0 | |
| 2018 | 177.3 | 178.4 | 176.4 | |
| 2017 | 167.1 | 169.5 | 176.6 | |
| 2016 | 170.2 | 175.1 | 174.6 | |
| 2015 | 164.3 | 168.8 | 168.4 |
Across the same 11 years, the tour's soybean production number missed the final by 0.13 billion bushels on average, against 0.12 billion for USDA's August forecast. On beans it is close to a coin flip between them.
Show the soybean record, 2015–2025
The tour called the crop under the final in 6 of 11 years. It landed on the final once, in 2021. Against USDA's August forecast it came closer 5 times and USDA came closer 5, with 1 drawn. Beans are the softer half of the tour: scouts measure corn as a yield in the field, but they never measure a soybean yield at all — they count pods, and the production number is built from those counts plus judgement.
| Year | Tour | USDA Aug | Final | Tour vs final — billion bushels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 4.246 | 4.29 | 4.26 | |
| 2024 | 4.740 | 4.59 | 4.37 | |
| 2023 | 4.110 | 4.21 | 4.16 | |
| 2022 | 4.535 | 4.53 | 4.28 | |
| 2021 | 4.436 | 4.34 | 4.44 | |
| 2020 | 4.362 | 4.42 | 4.14 | |
| 2019 | 3.497 | 3.68 | 3.56 | |
| 2018 | 4.683 | 4.59 | 4.54 | |
| 2017 | 4.331 | 4.38 | 4.39 | |
| 2016 | 4.093 | 4.06 | 4.31 | |
| 2015 | 3.887 | 3.92 | 3.93 |
The numbers on the table
Every forecast for this year's corn crop, published before anyone knows the answer — and what each one is worth.
USDA, August WASDE. USDA's first survey-based 2026 estimate, printed Aug 12: corn 180.7 bu/acre (down 2.3 from July), soybeans 52.7 (down 0.3). This is the number the tour's scouts will be checking against in the field.
AGSIST nowcast. Our ratings-only nowcast of the US final yield, read straight from the model's own output file. The band is the 80th percentile of leave-one-year-out backtest errors at this week of the season, recomputed every run. Current run: 182.6 bu with an 80% band of 5.5, week ending Sep 13, model ge-linear-v1. Corrected 2026-08-20. An earlier 183.6, locked Aug 11, was computed on a history file that carried in-season forecasts in place of final yields. Superseded; the source defect is fixed.
Pro Farmer tour. Pro Farmer's 2026 national corn estimate, published at the end of tour week.
What they have been worth. Over the 11 tours from 2015 to 2025, Pro Farmer's final corn number missed the crop that actually came in by 4.1 bushels on average and USDA's August forecast missed by 3.1. USDA came closer in 7 of those 11 years. The full table is below.
Nightly results
Scouts run two routes at once, Monday through Thursday, and states report at the nightly meetings. Corn is a sampled yield in bushels per acre. Soybeans are pod counts in a three-foot square — more pods means more beans, but pods do not convert cleanly into bushels, so treat them as a direction, not a yield.
7 of 7 state corn figures are in — 7 below 2025. These are state samples, not a national yield: Pro Farmer's national number is acreage-weighted and posts at the end of the week.
Show each district
What counts as the final. Final yield here means the figure USDA published the following January in its annual summary. USDA revises a few of those later by a tenth to half a bushel; this page uses the January number for every year so the comparison stays consistent.
Our own number is on the record too. The AGSIST nowcast above was locked Aug 11 — the day before the August WASDE — and published on the analyst board before the tour rolled. We also filed two directional calls that report: corn revising up, beans revising up. USDA revised both down. Both are graded misses, kept on the record. It stays where it is whether it ends up looking smart or not.
Sources. This page is not affiliated with Pro Farmer or Farm Journal. Tour figures are theirs; the comparison and the arithmetic are ours.