Wet spring brings troubling start to corn planting

ST. LOUIS (AP) — John Reifsteck looks out at his muddy 1,800-acre central Illinois farm and wonders when he’ll get to plant.

Like so many other Midwest growers who were praying for rain during the recent drought, he’s now pining for enough sunshine and heat to dry out his soggy fields as the deadline approaches for deciding what he can even plant this year.

It’s a troubling scenario playing out across America’s breadbasket, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture says just 12 percent of the nation’s cornfields have been planted. That’s about a quarter of what would was plante...