You can’t sell what you don’t harvest. The ROI of tiling.
Corn’s sitting around $4, and nobody’s in a hurry to write a check for tile. That’s fair.
But it’s worth remembering that 2018 was worse. The marketing year average for that crop was $3.61. So if $4 corn feels like a reason to wait, keep in mind that the farmers who tiled in 2018 were staring at a worse number than you are.
Let’s say you tiled a 20-acre wet spot back in 2018, and your neighbor looked at the same spot and decided he couldn’t justify it. Eight years later, where does that leave the two of you?
What we’re assuming
Everything’s out in the open here so you can swap in your own numbers.
- 20 wet acres in southern Minnesota, the kind of low ground that sits under water in a wet spring
- Corn and soybean rotation
- 190 bushel corn and 55 bushel beans on the drained acres
- A 30 bushel corn and 10 bushel bean yield response on the drained acres in normal years, which is the low end of what extension research shows for poorly drained ground
- Three wet years out of eight: 2019, 2024, and 2025. Springs were rough in 2021 and 2022 too, but we left those out
- We assume the wet acres simply went unplanted in those years. If they got planted and then drowned out, the loss is bigger
- USDA marketing year average prices
- Install cost adjusted with general inflation, not a contractor quote
What did the job cost in 2018?
Spot tiling runs somewhere around $1,000 an acre today. Run that backward through inflation and 2018 lands near $700. Call it $14,000 for the 20 acres.
Hold that number. We’ll come back to it.
What the wet spot cost the guy who waited
2019 was the spring nobody’s forgotten. Farmers couldn’t plant a record 11.4 million acres of corn nationwide, and Minnesota alone accounted for more than a million of them.
Then 2024 brought the fourth-wettest June in Minnesota’s recorded history, with widespread drown-out across southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. And 2025 came right back around, with parts of southern Minnesota picking up 8 to 10 inches of rain in June.
Three crops that never happened on those 20 acres. Roughly $37,000 in grain that didn’t get sold. Back out the seed and fertilizer he didn’t have to buy, and he’s still down about $15,000.
The part nobody notices
Here’s what gets missed in this conversation. That wet spot wasn’t only costing him in the wet years.
In 2021 and 2022, when corn ran to $6.00 and then $6.54, those acres got planted. They just didn’t produce like the rest of the field. Roots in soggy ground don’t go deep, and a shallow root system quits early when July turns hot.
Across the five years both farmers got a crop in, the drained acres are worth about another $14,000.
Add it up
About $29,000 in eight years, against a $14,000 install.
The tile paid for itself somewhere around year four or five, before the good prices even showed up. Everything since has been money the other guy left in the ground.
What about prevented planting?
It helps. It doesn’t fix anything.
The average prevented planting payment in 2019 came to $224.04 an acre across all crops. That covers what you already spent. It doesn’t grow a crop, and it doesn’t build anything you still own in 2035.
And here’s the bigger problem: in two of those three wet years, prevented planting wasn’t even an option. Minnesota’s final planting date for corn is May 31. In 2024 and 2025 the crop went in on time and then drowned in June. That’s a replant or a total loss, not a prevented planting claim.
You can’t plan around a program that only shows up one year in three.
What did waiting actually save?
Nothing. That’s the part that stings.
The job that cost $14,000 in 2018 costs about $20,000 today. Corn is still around $4. The tile got 40% more expensive and the crop didn’t get any better.
Waiting for a better year to tile only works if the better year shows up. Meanwhile the water keeps doing what water does.
Run your own numbers
Every field is different. Outlet distance, spacing, soil type, and how booked your contractor is will all move the install cost, and your yield response depends on what that ground is doing now.
But the question isn’t really whether you can afford to tile on $4 corn. It’s whether you can afford to keep farming around a spot that’s costing you every single year, wet or dry.
Talk to your drainage contractor about what your wet acres are actually costing you. The math is usually closer than people think.