Sign Up for Updates
Integrated Crop Management
Integrated Crop Management
Sign Up for Updates

Sharpen Your Crop Scouting Skills at the 2025 Crop Scout School on May 22

April 28, 2025
Content Author: Rebecca Vittetoe , Logan McCrea, Virgil Schmitt

Are you a crop scout, or interested in honing in on your crop scouting skills? Join us for our Crop Scout School on May 22, 2025 at the ISU Southeast Research and Demonstration Farm near Crawfordsville (3115 Louisa-Washington Rd). Check-in begins at 8:30 a.m., and the program runs from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 

The Crop Scout School equips individuals with basic crop scouting skills, making it ideal for beginners or as a refresher before the growing season.

Crop scouts practicing taking stand counts in corn at a previous Crop Scout School.
Past participants at the Crop Scout School practicing doing stand assessments during the in-field session. Photo by Rebecca Vittetoe, ISU. 

Topics will include:

  • Crop scouting tips and tricks – Virgil Schmitt, Extension Field Agronomist
  • Corn and soybean staging – Logan McCrea and Rebecca Vittetoe, Extension Field Agronomists
  • Crop disease identification – Alison Robertson, Extension Plant Pathologist, ISU
  • Weed identification – Wesley Everman, Extension Weed Scientist
  • Insect pest identification – Erin Hodgson, Extension Entomologist
  • Other crop challenges (nutrient deficiencies, herbicide injury, etc.) – Logan McCrea and Rebecca Vittetoe
  • In-field sessions (stand assessments in corn and soybeans, herbicide injury plots, and other field diagnostics) – Logan McCrea, Virgil Schmitt, Rebecca Vittetoe, and Wesley Everman

Registration Details: 

Advance registration is required. The $150 registration fee includes printed and digital course materials, lunch, and refreshments. Registration closes on May 16, and space is limited to 60 participants.

For more information, and to register for the Crop Scout School go to: https://go.iastate.edu/cropscoutschool or click the button below. 

Crop Scout School Registration 

Links to this article are strongly encouraged, and this article may be republished without further permission if published as written and if credit is given to the author, Integrated Crop Management News, and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. If this article is to be used in any other manner, permission from the author is required. This article was originally published on April 28, 2025. The information contained within may not be the most current and accurate depending on when it is accessed.

Authored by
Rebecca Vittetoe
Rebecca Vittetoe
  • Field Agronomist in EC/SE Iowa
Rebecca Vittetoe works with farmers, landowners, and ag retailers to answer agronomy-related questions. Her areas of expertise include general agronomy, crop diseases, corn, soybean, and forage management, cover crops, integrated pest management, and crop scouting. Vittetoe received her B.S. in agronomy along with a journalism and mass communications minor from Iowa State University in 2014. She earn her M.S. in agronomy from Iowa State University in 2019.
Logan McCrea
Logan McCrea
  • Field Agronomist in SC Iowa
Logan McCrea is a field agronomist in south central Iowa for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. He works with farmers, retailers, and landowners to provide educational programming on crop management topics as well as use research based information to answer agronomy-related questions.
Virgil Schmitt
Virgil Schmitt
  • Field Agronomist in SE Iowa
Virgil Schmitt has been in his current position since 1992, although counties he's covered have changed over time. He's worked as an extension 4-H and youth leader in Butler and Grundy Counties and as an extension agriculturist in Linn County, Iowa. He taught high school agricultural education in Reinbeck, Iowa and community college agriculture at Muscatine Community College. Schmitt is an eastern Iowa native, where he lives and manages his home farming operation. He earned an M.S. degree in Agricultural Education from Iowa State University.

Crops:

Topics:

Tags: