Reduced supply may drive food prices higher.

    Floods that have inundated the Midwest could reduce world corn supplies and drive food prices higher at a time when Americans are stretching their grocery budgets and when people in poor countries have rioted over rising food costs.

    The U.S. government will report later this month on how many acres of corn were lost to flooding, but farmers and agriculture experts say the toll appears grim, with thousands of acres probably destroyed in the region that grows most of the world's corn.

    "It's not a very good picture at all. We're looking at possibly a good reduction in acres if a lot of this crop remains underwater," said Chad Hart, an agriculture economist at Iowa State University. "There's still hope, but it wanes with each rainstorm."

    The disaster has drawn comparisons to the 1993 floods that displaced thousands of people and wiped away vast swaths of the heartland's agriculture. At the time, about 18 bushels per acre of corn were destroyed, "and everybody is reporting that this year is worse," said Jason Ward, grains analyst at North Star Commodity in Minneapolis.

    The most recent floods have sent corn prices soaring past $7 a bushel for the first time, up from about $4 a year ago. Prices shot to a record for a seventh straight day Friday, climbing as high as $7.37 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

    Floodwaters also hurt soybean crops, sending prices near all-time highs. Wheat, oats, rice and other food commodities were also damaged.

    In Iowa, the country's top corn producer, about 9 percent of the anticipated crop either hasn't been planted because farmers can't get into their fields, or needs to be replanted because it's waterlogged, said Roger Elmore, a corn expert at Iowa State.

    That's about 1.2 million acres of corn - almost 1.5 percent of the country's anticipated harvest - that may produce only a fraction of its potential yield.

    Rain continued falling Friday in much of Iowa, and it's already late to be planting corn.

    "It's Noah's Ark-like conditions out there ... and if you replant now you're going to get much lower yields," said Vic Lespinasse of grainanalyst.com in Chicago.

    Corn prices have shot up more than 80 percent in the past year because of rising energy prices and surging global demand for biofuel and livestock feed, but excessive rainfall in the Midwest has pushed prices up nearly 20 percent in the past month alone.

    Two Deaths Tied to Floods

    In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hospital patients in wheelchairs and on stretchers were evacuated in the middle of the night as the biggest flood the city has ever seen swamped more than 400 blocks Friday and all but cut off the supply of clean drinking water in the city of 120,000.

    As many as 10,000 townspeople driven from their homes by the rain-swollen Cedar River took shelter at schools and hotels or moved in with relatives.

    About 100 miles to the west, officials in Iowa's biggest city, Des Moines, urged people in low-lying areas to clear out by Friday evening. The Des Moines River was expected to crest Friday night, but officials said just before the expected peak that a malfunctioning gauge may have led them to overestimate how high it would rise.

    Officials became less worried that the levees would be topped, but U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Roger Less said the city of 190,000 residents would not be out of danger until today.

    The flooding was blamed for at least two deaths in Iowa: A driver was killed in an accident on a road underwater, and a farmer who went out to check his property was swept away.

    Since June 6, Iowa has gotten at least 8 inches of rain. That came after a wet spring that left the ground saturated. As of Friday, nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. More thunderstorms are possible in the Cedar Rapids area over the weekend, but next week is expected to be sunny and dry.

    In Cedar Rapids, the engorged river flowed freely through downtown. At least 438 city blocks were underwater, and in some neighborhoods the water was 8 feet high.

    Hundreds of cars were submerged, with only their antennas poking up through the water. Plastic toys bobbed in front of homes.

    Flooding Shatters Records

    For decades, Cedar Rapids escaped any major, widespread flooding, even during the Midwest deluge of 1993, and many people had grown confident that rising water would pose no danger to their city. The flood this time didn't just break records; it shattered them.

    The Cedar River was expected to crest Friday night at nearly 32 feet, an astonishing 12 feet higher than the old record, set in 1929.

    Flooding left 2 inches of water in the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids on Thursday night, and water spilling into the lower levels threatened to knock out the hospital's emergency generator.

    A total of 176 patients - some of them frail, about 30 of them from a nursing home at the medical center - were moved to other hospitals in an all-night operation that was not completed until daybreak.

    Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties disaster areas, a designation that helps speed aid and opens the way for loans and grants. The damage in Cedar Rapids alone was a preliminary $737 million, Fire Department spokesman Dave Koch said.

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     Contributing: Amy Lorentzen