ST LOUIS-A deep­en­ing drought in US farm states has cut fur­ther in­to this fall's har­vest, with farm­ers now ex­pect­ed to pull from their fields the low­est corn yield in more than a decade. But US farm­ers are still ex­pect­ed to pro­duce their eighth-largest har­vest ever, and while there's sure to be a rise in prices at the gro­cery stores, there's lit­tle risk of a failed har­vest that would lead to short­ages on the shelves.

The US Agri­cul­ture De­part­ment pre­dict­ed the na­tion's biggest har­vest ever in the spring, when farm­ers plant­ed 96.4 mil­lion acres (39 mil­lion hectares) of corn-the most since 1937. But it cut its es­ti­mate a month ago and again Fri­day, say­ing it now ex­pects the na­tion to pro­duce 10.8 bil­lion bushels, the least since 2006. If that es­ti­mate holds, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment says it will be enough to meet the world's needs and en­sure there are no short­ages. The US is the world's top ex­porter of corn, soy­beans and wheat.

But ex­perts say food prices will al­most cer­tain­ly climb as corn is a wide­ly used in­gre­di­ent found in every­thing from cos­met­ics to ce­re­al, co­las and can­dy bars. The drought stretch­ing across the US from Ohio west to Cal­i­for­nia is deep­est in the mid­dle of the coun­try, and ma­jor farm states like Iowa and Illi­nois are see­ing con­di­tions get worse each week. Farm­ers cred­it ad­vances in seed tech­nol­o­gy that have pro­duced hardier, more drought-tol­er­ant corn for any har­vest at all.