And farmers are trying to adapt. Donn Teske says he will be stocking fewer cattle next year and trying to plant crops with less tillage to preserve the moisture.

Some countries are also taking a longer term approach to reducing their reliance on food imports by looking for alternative staple crops.

Nigeria has a population of 170 million and according to Debisi Araba, the special adviser to Nigeria's agriculture minister, the country spends 635 billion naira ($4 billion) annually on wheat and an astonishing one billion naira ($6.3 million) each day on rice imports.

But Nigeria has a plan to combat this huge cost. Araba said Nigeria produces 34 million tons of the starchy root crop cassava every year and this can be mixed with wheat flour.

He said Nigeria was planning to replace 40 percent of wheat flour with cassava and was ramping up production of rice. Araba believes the country will be able to produce 2.1 million tons of rice by 2015, first becoming self sufficient, and then able to export.

For other farmers, it may be more of a challenge to deal with any erratic weather patterns in the future.

Jeff Powell said: "Now with a wet autumn a lot of people are struggling to get their winter crops planted. If we have more years like this (2012) then we may aim to plant more crops in the spring... but the spring last year was bone dry. It's a bit of a catch-22."