CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (NBC NEWS)- As floodwaters recede, the clean-up begins.

Thousands of homes along the Cedar River in Iowa have spent the last several days underwater.

Now, residents are assessing the damage from what's being called the worst flood in more than a decade.

In places that are beginning to dry out, the flood waters have been replaced by the flow of nervous and anxious survivors.

Everything here is going to take awhile, especially the clean-up and recovery.

Ryan and Michelle Sears live a mile from the river. The water was never supposed to get to their home.

Flood victim Ryan Sears said, "And we came in and I mean I would have been swimming. I would have been completely covered up. I was just devastated."

And now they must begin to assess what the water took away.

"We are out a furnace, a water heater and a washer/dryer, but we are lucky than most people. That's for sure," said Sears.

The luck has run out for a lot of Iowa’s farmers. The top corn producing state in the country now has more than 3 million acres underwater, and that's a crop loss that will affect food prices across the board.

Agribusiness expert Richard Gilmore said, "Feed prices are skyrocketing and that certainly is a pocketbook issue for all of us."

But it's nowhere near the issue those in the soggy heartland are facing.