Usage will have to come down, Hurt said. It likely will come from the livestock and foreign sectors. "The USDA has said that if the ethanol industry gets 1 billion more bushels of corn it means that the domestic livestock industry will have to cut back 16% in feeding corn," he said. "And then our foreign buyers will have to cut back 18%."

Adding to the supply shortage and, ultimately, higher corn prices is the ongoing devaluation of the U.S. dollar. "Another important part in who is going to be able to pay the price for corn is the exchange rate of the dollar," Hurt said. "When their currencies are strong, the foreign sector's currency goes a long way in the United States. If we should see our dollar weaken more, the foreign buyer is going to be able to stay in and pay these prices. That says that the domestic livestock feeder might have to bear even more of the consequences."

Corn growers came into the 2008 crop year needing to produce a bumper crop to satisfy the burgeoning grain demand. Those plans likely were drowned out by floods in much of the Corn Belt.

In four of the hardest hit corn-producing states -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri -- nearly 50% of the corn crop was rated fair to very poor as of June 22, according to the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service.

With millions of farm acres damaged by high water, the losses to Midwest farmers stand to reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, Hurt said. "This crop in particular for our farm producers is the most valuable crop they have ever raised," he said. "Not only is it a valuable crop, they have the most invested in this crop of any crop they have ever raised. So if they are losing that crop it is going to be the biggest dollar loss that we have ever experienced on a per-acre basis."