Texas needs rain - and needs it quickly - to keep farmers and ranchers from suffering even bigger losses next year from the drought that already has left them with record-breaking losses this year, producers said Friday while in San Antonio.

Corn growers in Texas could encounter even bigger losses in 2012 after seeing output fall by 40 percent this year; and rice plantings, which fell by only 2 percent this year, could be cut nearly in half if more water does not become available soon, officials said.

"It could drive us to acreage levels we've probably not seen in 80 years or more," said Ronald Gertson, a Wharton-area rice farmer. He was on a panel at the San Antonio International Farm & Ranch Show that was looking at the state's water needs. "Without some serious rain in the next two months, we're going to be at that 50 percent level," Gertson added.

The drought was not an official topic during the ranch show's South Texas Commodity Symposium. But with damage from the current drought building and forecasts suggesting rainfall won't return in any meaningful way until 2013, it was a dominant topic of conversation.

"I don't want to be all about doom and gloom, but you can't grow crops without rain," said David Gibson, executive director of the Texas Corn Producers Board.

He estimated that even with corn acreage up in Texas this year, production could be down by 40 percent in 2011 because of the lack of rain and the searing heat during the spring and summer.

Gibson did not want to predict what 2012's corn production might be, but he's worried because growers won't start the year with as much soil moisture as they did this year.

wpack@express-news.net