food prices 2013

The epic drought - the worst in 56 years - that has wreaked havoc on more than half the United States is setting up 2013 to deliver record-high U.S. food prices that will affect more than just our grocery budgets.

As the drought continues to kill crops throughout the Midwestern U.S., a region known as the "corn belt" because it produces 40% of the world's crop, the problem reaches farther than the dry U.S.

Now the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warns that if countries, including the United States, restrict exports on concerns of higher grain prices, the world could face a kind of food crisis like the one seen five years ago.

"There is potential for a situation to develop like we had back in 2007/08," Abdolreza Abbassian, FAO's senior economist and grain analysts told Reuters. "There is an expectation that this time around we will not pursue bad polices and intervene in the market by restrictions, and if that doesn't happen we will not see such a serious situation as 2007/08. But if those policies get repeated, anything is possible."

Abbassian added, "The very strong appreciation of the dollar, and the surge in prices, is basically a double blow which is going to be quite stressful for some of the more fragile countries."

Related: Higher food prices are just one part of a fascinating but frightening global trend that will restrain our most vital resources, as well as your finances - unless you're prepared.

Rising Food Prices Stall Economic Recovery

The FAO Food Price Index jumped 6% in July after three months of declines. Grain markets got a boost from speculation that Black Sea grain producers, particularly in Russia, might levy export restrictions after a drought there walloped crops.

A study conducted last year by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, based on some 70 years of weather data, found that from heat waves to cold snaps to droughts, weather could cause up to a 1.7% rise or fall each year in the U.S. economy's gross domestic product. In 2011, not counting extreme weather events like tornadoes or hurricanes, the amount was $507 billion.

Jeff Lazo, one of the study leaders, told USA Today that the findings are significant "especially when GDP is growing a percent or so a year, if that."