FORT WORTH, Texas –  At a grocery store in Fort Worth, shoppers walk the aisles with coupons in their hands and off-brand products in their carts. A still-recovering economy has many looking to save a few dollars on their food bill, a job that is expected to become more difficult before year's end.  

The lingering and pervasive drought that's taking its toll on farmers and ranchers across America's heartland now is expected to soon impact families across the country in the form of higher prices at the market.  

How much higher is a tough question.  

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Rising costs
While the USDA predicts a 3 to 5 percent increase on everything from cereal to steak, some economists believe price hikes will come closer to 10 percent.

 

 

One study suggests a family of four will spend $600 more in 2013 to buy the same products they purchased last year.  

"I'll be more careful about how much I buy so there's no waste and be careful what I buy," one woman told me as she was choosing oranges in the produce section.   

The pictures of wilted crops and hungry cattle – so prevalent this summer – tell us beef and corn will affected. But experts say even items like chips and peanut butter will be more expensive at this time next year.  

“I think we’re going to see price increase across the board,” said Bernard Weinstein, an economist at Southern Methodist University. “Because corn, in particular, is such a ubiquitous product – it’s used in the manufacture of most processed foods. “

So the ripple effect will mean price hikes down every aisle – on products like cereal and chips.

"I will try to find the best price because we don't have a lot of extra money to spend on groceries," said one woman visiting from Ohio and shopping with her daughter.

The biggest hikes are expected to be on some of the staples – dairy, eggs, poultry, pork and beef.

However, beef prices may actually ease a bit in the short term, as ranchers who can't afford to feed their cattle are selling them off early – so there's a healthy supply hitting the market now.

But next year at this time, there will likely be shortages.  So things like hamburger meat, sometimes considered a budget-friendly meal, may soon be priced more like steak.  

‘You’ve got to eat’
Talking to shoppers in this Texas market, they're aware of what's coming and resigned to it.  

"Food is not a discretionary item," one man said as he put a carton of eggs in his basket. "You've got to eat."  

From farmers’ pastures to our own kitchen tables, the drought of 2012 will exact a high toll.

More coverage of the drought: 

Drought sends Mississippi into ‘uncharted territory’ 

‘Best year ever’ for some farmers outside drought region   

Forced to sell cattle during drought, dairy farmers ‘just keep praying’ for rain

Americans tell their story of #Drought2012 

In drought-stricken Wisconsin, farmers helping farmers  

Emergency well drilling brings relief to farmers stricken by drought

Have you been affected by the worst drought in more than 50 years? Share your photos with us on Instagram, Tumblr or Twitter with the tag #Drought2012. You can also upload your photos in the box below. 

The worst American drought in more than half a century is driving up grain prices and deepening worries about global food shortages.

With much of the corn crop already lost, farmers are holding out hope for some weather relief that could help salvage the harvest of soybeans and other. But the latest data from the government Friday showed that the damage to the food supply chain already has been done.

“This is worse than 2008 -- we’re in kind of a perfect storm scenario,” said Ana Puchi-Donnelly, senior agricultural commodities trader at London-based Marex Spectron. “We won’t really know until the whole crop is harvested. We’re talking about the worst drought in the last 50 to 70 years in one of the hottest years on record."

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Shriveling supplies have sent grain prices soaring. Corn futures set an all-time high Friday to levels roughly 50 percent higher than the end of May, before the drought took hold. Soybean prices also jumped this week to more than 25 percent above pre-drought levels.

While those price spikes have yet to work their way through the food chain, American consumers can expect to pay more to put dinner on the table. The overall impact on food prices, however, is expected to relatively small.

“If you're a family of four on a tight budget, it's not inconsequential,” Gregory Page, CEO of Cargill, one of the world’s largest food producers, told CNBC. “But to put it in context, it is about $75 per man, woman and child here in the U.S. vs. the levels we saw a year ago.”

The outlook for this year’s harvest has changed dramatically over just a few months. In the spring, U.S. corn farmers planted the most acreage in 75 years and expected a record harvest. Countries that rely on the United States as the world’s largest food exporter were hopeful the yield would replenish depleted global stockpiles.

But those hopes have been dashed as farmers sift through their drought-parched farmlands. The government’s latest estimate of this year’s harvest, released Friday, was even worse than expected. After predicting a bumper crop of nearly 15 billion bushels of corn in June, the USDA Friday predicted a harvest of less than 11 billion bushels, 13 percent below last year's level.

Expected corn yields were slashed from June’s estimate of 166 bushels per acre to just 123 bushels, some 25 percent below normal. Inventories of soybeans, widely used as livestock feed from India to Indiana, will be the smallest in nine years.

There is little sign of relief in the weather forecast. The severest conditions -– which have already enveloped more than a third of the nation -– continued to spread this week, according to a report Thursday from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska. July was the hottest month on record, beating the worst month of the Dust Bowl era in 1936. After mild weather allowed farmers to plant earlier than normal this year, modest rainfall in parts of the Midwest this week came too late for much of the crop.

"There will be some improvement; the cooler temperatures certainly will help,” said Andy Karst, a meteorologist for World Weather. “But most of the Midwest has not had enough rain for significant improvement. Crops may stabilize or decline a little more the next couple of weeks."

Though food inflation in the U.S. so far has been relatively tame, the surge in crop prices is expected to move quickly through the global food chain, pushing up prices of beef, poultry and other processed foods.

Cattle ranchers already are dipping into stockpiles of hay set aside for winter after the drought killed much of the grass forage they typically rely on during the summer months.

"We don't have much hay, we don't have much corn, we don't have much of really anything,” Brett Crosby, a cattle rancher in Cowley, Wyo., told CNBC. “Over half of the pastures in the United States are rated poor to very poor in condition."

The U.S. crop shortfall comes as the rest of the global supply chain is already under pressure. Hot weather in Russia and too much rain in farmlands in Brazil have lowered crop yields, further straining inventories.

Demand, meanwhile, remains strong in the developing world, even as the global economy slows. The shrunken forecast for this year’s crop has raised concerns that the world could see another repeat of the severe shortfall in 2008 that led to food riots in some countries.

“Supplying countries put on embargoes against exports and we had importing countries that in many cases were buying more than they actually need,” said Page. “The combination of those two actions by governments exacerbated the sense of shortfall and I think accelerated the price increases."

Page this year’s expected shortfall -- between 3 and 4 percent below the long-term trend in production levels -- is “manageable, if we make good decisions.”

That effort would require a coordinated global effort by governments to head off potential bottlenecks that produced big food price spikes in 2008. Those moves could include scaling back government subsidies put in place to promote biofuel production, which has diverted corn and soy supplies.

"Several urgent actions must be taken to address the current situation to prevent a potential global food price crisis," said Shenggen Fan, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, a think tank funded by the World Bank. 

(Reuters contributed.)

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