OTTUMWA, IOWA -- The good, the bad, and the ugly. That is how one Iowa State Extensions employee described farmland conditions across the heartland this fall.

Our Fact Finder team visited one Iowa farmer to see how the conditions were treating him.

Clark Yeager told Fact Finder the fields receive far more rain than they needed this summer.

He said the fields stayed so wet he could not replant some of his crop, but he is still better off than some of his neighbors.

“There is one thing you can’t have. You can’t have an ear of corn if you don’t have a stalk of corn. We had about 10% of our cron that should have been replanted be we never had a chance to replant it. It will have a very poor stand and poor yield as a result of that.”

Clark said he had been trying to separate his fields into sections of good, bad, and ugly.

He said the good fields should bring in 160 bushels per acre. The bad fields, he hopes can average 100 bushels per acre. And then there are the ugly fields. Those he disgustedly said might have between 50-75 bushels per acre.

 “Well like the extension man said, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are some excellent looking corn and beans and some very poor corn and beans and then some of my neighbors didn’t get anything planted at all.”

Yeager said he did not know how many acres he has of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

“We have no idea what we are going to have as a yield but I would guess that Federal Crop Insurance is going to be used quite a little bit this year because of low yields, especially on corn.”

Yeager did tell Fact Finder most soybean fields were fairing better than corn, however he said some fields suffered a “sudden death” in the past week.

On the bright side, Yeager did say he should begin harvesting the good corn earlier this fall.

Our Fact Finder Team also looked into situations down by the river. Mark Carlton from Iowa State University Extensions says those fields flooded might have mixed results.

Regarding soybean crops, those, he said, most likely were mashed by the rush and weight of the water. He doesn’t think those fields will even be harvested.

Corn on the other hand varies. He said it depends how high the water from last week’s crest got on the plants. 

If the water reached the ears of the corn, it could create some rotting on the ears if the husks were not tight enough. If we water did not reach the ears, he said the crops should still be marketable.