(NDAgConnection.com) – Flooding and excessive rains across key parts of Australia’s wheat growing areas have resulted in extensive damage to what was expected to be a record bin-busting high quality crop just a few weeks ago, exacerbating concerns over world food supplies.

According to Reuters, a lower quality crop in Australia, the world’s No.2 supplier of the grain, comes as dryness in North America and the Russia-Ukraine war curb global supplies, fuelling red-hot food prices.

While Australia is still on track for a third year of bumper harvest, about half of the crop grown on its eastern grain belt – known for premium hard wheat – is likely to be reduced to animal feed, although the extent of the damage will be known after waters recede, traders, analysts and farmers said.

“There have been some growers who have had total loss … it’s still pretty raw for many people,” said Brett Hosking, a grains farmer in southern Victoria sate, who is also the chairman of the farmers body GrainGrowers. “In the next fortnight or so we will have a very clear picture.”

Residents in major regional towns across Australia’s most populous state are being urged to leave homes as slow-moving flood waters push downstream and the country’s fourth major flood crisis this year rolls into a second month.

Large swathes of farmland across Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria have been inundated with flood waters, damaging wheat and other crops, including potatoes, and delaying sorghum planting.