Frozen pizzas, cornflakes, wallpaper paste, shoe polish and lipstick could all cost more because of floods in the Midwest region of the US. Relentless rains have hit plantings of maize, a key crop used in a bewildering array of different products, and particularly popular now for producing ethanol for fuel. The trouble is that world supplies of maize are so stretched that a bad harvest in any leading growing region will have big repercussions on world food prices.

In the Midwest, a long run of wet weather through spring and now summer has left fields waterlogged and rivers at bursting point. Iowa is already experiencing record levels of flooding, and the danger is expected to spread over a much wider area of the Midwest as stormy weather continues. Especially worrying is an alarming rise in the level of the Mississippi river.

This is a picture alarmingly similar to devastating floods in 1993, when the Mississippi burst its banks and left widespread devastation across the Midwest that cost about $15 billion.

Forecasters have given warning that the Mississippi, north of St Louis, may soon reach the levels of the 1993 flood, and have expressed fears that the city could be flooded by the weekend.