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• "We're just waiting for it to dry out," Reifsteck said from his farm in Champaign County, Ill. "For corn, the odds of diminishing the yield get greater the farther you go in May (before planting the crop). You're basically squeezing it into a shorter season, and the odds of everything going well are pretty low. Once you get to June 1, you have to decide if you want to plant a lot of acres of corn" or devote more acreage to soybeans.
• "This will be a difficult crop to assess, and yeah, it's discouraging," he said. "We're just playing the odds. We just have to get something planted."
• The USDA recently estimated that U.S. farmers would plant 97 million acres of corn this year, which would be 100,000 more acres than last year, and that this year's crop could produce a record harvest if yields are close to the trend line or above. But that's if farmers can just get the crop planted: Mirroring Iowa's issues, just 14 percent of Nebraska's corn has been sown, 7 percent of Illinois' and 22 percent of Missouri's.
• Given that early May typically is ideal for planting corn, farmers in water-logged areas may have to wait a week or more for their fields to dry enough to be planted. There's incentive to make it happen: Farmers broadly already have fertilized the fields, making it difficult to let that cost go for naught.
• If the planting gets delayed into June, growers could turn to the shorter-season corn varieties, switch some of the acreage to soybeans or declare the land unplantable and collect the crop insurance for that lost opportunity, said Christopher Hurt, a Purdue University agricultural economist.
• "This is just something they now are thinking about -- what are my alternatives?" Hurt said. He added that the recent rainfall would help the Corn Belt better withstand another drought, if one occurs this summer, by restoring its subsoil moisture.
• "We keep saying, 'Don't panic,'" Hurt added. "But how many more weeks can we go and not panic? Not many."
• Adding to the uncertainty are commodities markets, which in recent months have shown volatility. Corn prices dropped about 80 cents in early April but jumped 40 cents early last week, with planting delays accounting for at least some of those swings, said Chad Hart, an Iowa State University agricultural economist. The price of corn remains healthy and allows for profit, he said.
• "The market is ready to make a run, but it doesn't know which direction to go yet," Hart said in a news release. "There's some cause for optimism in the middle of all this volatility in the market."
• In Ohio, Bill Bayliss remains upbeat. With about 2,000 acres on which he grows corn, soybeans and wheat near West Mansfield while also raising cattle and sheep, the 67-year-old farmer credits his area's drier conditions than other states for allow

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