Excessive rains rotting crops in Southeastern U.S.

(CBS News) CORDELE, Ga. -- The latest drought report shows more than 45 percent of the country is bone-dry, almost all of it west of the Mississippi River. But in the southeast, they're getting too much rain. That will mean higher food bills. The deluge is already hurting one particular town in Georgia.

It rained again Thursday afternoon in Cordele -- the town that calls itself the "watermelon capital of the world."

Sam Crenshaw has grown them in Cordele for 30 years. "It's the wettest year I've seen," he said. "I've never seen a year this wet."

Will record rainfall alter taste, price of summer produce?

Rainfall totals in many parts of the southeast are 20 inches above normal. Produce that grows close to the ground or on vines have been heavily damaged.

Waterlogged melons in Cordele split open, rot or lose flavor. "You see that brown around the edge of it?" Crenshaw asked as he showed us a sliced watermelon.

Half of Crenshaw's crop is ruined. He thinks he's facing a million dollars in losses. One can irrigate during a drought, but with this much rain, Crenshaw said that there is "nothing you can do. You can't take the water away."

The melons that are any good end up at packing houses like the one owned by Danny Wilcher. July is supposed to be peak season. "We shut down for two weeks," he said, which to his recollection has never happened.

On Thursday, just one conveyor belt was in use. Usually there are four. A food economist told us shoppers can expect fruit and vegetable prices to be at least 10 percent higher in the fall.

"We're here to make money -- all of us," Wilcher said. "The workers you see here, the truck drivers hauling this stuff out of here ...it affects everybody."

The heavy rains come after two years of drought in the southeast. The National Weather Service on Thursday said this part of the country can expect above average rainfall through October.