Drought hitting grocery prices

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Pains at the pump, now pains buying groceries, where will it end? The blame for this hike lies with mother nature.

It's being called one of the worst droughts in decades.  Dozens of crops through the mid-west and other parts of the nation are drying up from lack of water and too much heat.

"The cost of grain in the last two months has gone up about 30 percent," says Mike Keller, owner of Keller's Farm Stores. "Hay in the last year has doubled in price so there is definitely a lot of pressure on the meat industry."

With field corns and soybeans affected, this trickles down into food and fuel affected, grain prices are hitting record highs. Those field corns go to feed livestock and are some of the ingredients in foods that we buy off the shelves. Soybeans are usually found in oils and salad dressings.

Even if rains fall in the coming weeks, the lasting effects of poor crops may be seen in grocery prices for a while.

"If the crop in the Midwest turns out well, that'll help," says Keller. "If next year's crop is good, that'll help, but until then, until the weather changes enough to give us some relief, then it'll be hard."

The only relief that could come in the following months is that the price of meat will likely fall because of farmer's having to kill off livestock.

Grocery prices are likely to climb steadily over the next couple of months. To give you an idea of how the price of corn has climbed, reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that a bushel of corn was just under $6 early in June, that's now getting close to $8 a bushel.

We'll get a better idea of just how devastating this drought is when the U.S.D.A. releases its new report next week.