LEBANON -
The dry weather is also going to hit your wallet.
We're already paying for watering our lawns and running the air conditioning at home, but the next hit will likely come at the grocery store.
"Depending on things that you really do need, trying to figure out how to make it so, yeah, it will be a good impact," said grocery shopper Sherri Gibbs of Lebanon.
Even when rain comes, the damage will already be done. Twenty percent of the corn crop has probably been lost already, along with 15 percent of soybeans.
Boone County farmer Gene Clark dug into the hard dry earth looking for his bean crop Monday afternoon. He finally found a seed barely starting to germinate. By now, it should be a plant 4-5 inches tall.
"All shriveled up, drying up," Clark said of the seed.
What does he think when he sees that?
"Sad," he said.
It's the worst he's seen. The first cut of hay was a good one, but since the drought, he said, "It's going to be rough. Corn is probably half gone, I would say. Beans, it's hard to tell yet."
He sells his crop to dairies. A smaller crop means higher prices for the dairy. Same for cattle producers and cereal makers. And all that is passed on to consumers at the grocery checkout.
Experts say our food prices could grow another two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half percent in the next year because of drought.
"The animals are competing for a lot more of the soybeans, biodiesel uses a lot more of those biproducts, ethanol uses some of those products, and that's going to cause some of those prices to increase," University of Indianapolis professor Dr. Matthew Will said.
"Our salaries aren't raising three and four percent, so it will be a big impact on us," Gibbs said.
"We have a garden at home. We try to do what we can on our own. Other than that, it's just...we're with the rest of the world," said Shelly Kelsey.
Outside the IGA in Lebanon, shopper Deanna Marcus said, "People don't make a lot of money nowadays, so just the average person trying to get by, I believe it's going to be very rough."
If farmers have to tap into federal crop insurance because of the poor crop, that affects taxpayers, too. We may also have to pay for other emergency farm aid.
But there is a silver lining: Gas prices are lower than predicted.
Lebanon farmer Gene Clark shows a soybean seed that should be a four-inch plant by now.
Low crop yields will likely mean higher grocery prices.
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