There are the numbers and the story of this year’s crop from Crop Tour, but there’s also a lot of agricultural learning taking place by the scouts who are on tour. Bryan Coffman from the North English area says his eyes have been opened since he started going on Crop Tour as to the diversity of US agriculture.
“I farmed in Iowa for years, and you kind of always think about the Midwest in general and always seem to kind of know what’s out there in your own back yard but not everywhere,” Coffman said. “Every The first year was just out of curiosity, just kind of see what it was like out East, and, you know, I’ve learned that Ohio soils and Indiana soils are much different than what we have in Illinois and Iowa, and even Nebraska and Minnesota. That was kind of my first learning curve, I guess on that, but honestly, ever since then, I go because of the people.”
Not only are different places unique, but he also says there are highly variable conditions, sometimes within each field, that he didn’t realize before going on tour.
“You know, the first time I stepped in an Ohio cornfield the first year I was on tour, and it was a nice flat field, and you think you’re going to walk in there, see this nice black dirt under your feet and you go in there and it’s not,” Coffman said. “You’re kind of like, ’Wow, this is not what I was thinking it was going to be,’ and you start to talk to some of those people and you realize that their soil works differently, behaves differently, and rain can be a huge factor for them. It can for us, but sometimes in Iowa we like to feel like we’ve got some water holding capacity and some places aren’t like that out here.”
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