That might seem like a bizzaro claim, but local bakery owners Chris and Jessica Steffens said that a 50-pound bag of flour has gone up by about $5 in a year. A lower crop year for wheat, mixed with rising global demands from countries like India, makes for rising prices.

In a business like the Steffens' bakery, which uses 150 pounds of flour every night, that can add up pretty quickly. Bakeries across the nation are upping the price of bread and other baked goods.

Milk prices and egg prices also saw a hike in the last year, partially thanks to international demands for grain, with China as one of the big players.

The U.S. has long enjoyed low prices on imports from countries like China and India. Now, more than ever, we're sharing the bidding floor for our own products with international buyers.

Living in northwest Iowa, the chatter we hear in our grocery store aisles is mostly English with a little Spanish peppered into the mix.

But imagine the canned tomatoes talking chinese (China grows 31 percent of the world's tomatoes), the kiwis piping in with a little Italian (they raise 48 percent), and the carrots speaking Chinese and Russian.

How far is the rest of the world and its politics and economy from Le Mars? Only as far as the grocery store. Or the gas pump. Or the bakery.