Food prices are skyrocketing all across the globe, and there’s no end in sight. The United Nations says food inflation is currently at 30% a year, and the fast-eroding value of the dollar is causing food prices to appear even higher (in contrast to a weakening currency).
As the dollar drops in value due to runaway money printing at the Federal Reserve, the cost to import foods from other nations looks to double in just the next two years — and possibly every two years thereafter.
That’s probably why investors around the globe are flocking to farmland as the new growth industry.
“Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar,” reports Bloomberg magazine (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…).
“A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.”
Jim Rogers is also quoted in the same story, saying, “I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland.”
That’s because demand for food is accelerating even as radical climate changes, a loss of fossil water supplies, and the failure of genetically engineered crops is actually reducing food yields around the globe. Ceres Partners, which invests in farmland, has produced astonishing 16 percent annual returns since its launch in 2008. And this is during a depressed economy when most other industries are showing losses.
Why growing and storing your own food can be a goldmine
All this means we can count on three things happening in the years ahead:
Prediction #1) Food supplies will become more scarce.
Prediction #2) Food prices will double over the next 2-3 years, and then probably double again in another 2-3 years.
Prediction #3) When food prices are 400% of today’s levels, backyard farming or gardening pays off big in terms of real dollar savings.
In other words, as food prices skyrocket, it becomes increasingly more financially viable to grow your own food (or store it now while prices are low). I’m listing some resources below where you can learn more about growing your own food or storing high-density superfoods right now, but in the mean time, I’d like you to start considering the idea of starting your own garden in the spring.
You can’t grow gold. You can’t print your own currency (unless you’re the Fed). But you CAN grow something more valuable than gold and money: Food!
Lessons from post World War II Taiwan and why food is more valuable than gold
I lived in Taiwan for two years, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk with people there who lived through the post World War II recovery. During the war, of course, Taiwan was occupied by the imperialist Japanese empire, and Taiwan existed in a state of military occupation (with perpetual martial law).
After the war ended and the Japanese left, Taiwan bootstrapped its own government into power under Chiang Kai-shek. The old Taiwan currency was immediately printed in large quantities by the Taiwan government leading to a runaway inflation scenario for what is now called the “old Taiwan dollar.” Very quickly, however, the government launched a new currency called the New Taiwan dollar (NT$). By 1949, the old Taiwan dollar was being exchanged for the New Taiwan dollar (NT$) at a ratio of 40,000 to 1. (Yep. You had $40,000 and now it’s worth a buck…).
During those years after WWII, if you wanted to rent an apartment, buy a house or find a place to live, cash was worthless and even GOLD wasn’t considered very useful. The only thing that represented real wealth was FOOD. If you had food, you could trade it for anything: an automobile, a home, tools, clothing or even land. If you didn’t have food, you were bankrupt; regardless of how much cash or gold you had.
A chicken that could lay eggs was worth more than an ounce of gold!
You can’t eat gold, folks. And you can’t eat silver. Everybody has to eat to stay alive, and that means everybody needs a constant stream of food just to keep breathing. That’s why investing in food makes so much sense.
And by “investing in food,” I mean any or all of the following:
• Investing in storable food that you can save on the shelf and keep for future use or barter.
• Investing in your own gardening skills so that you have the know-how to produce food when needed.
• Investing in non-hybrid garden seeds so that you have the genetic blueprints to grow food that can propagate itself generation after generation.
• Investing in farmland — especially farmland with water — that offers the fertility and climate to produce food.
• Investing in educational courses that teach you how to create food through a variety of methods: Wildcrafting, gardening, sprouting and so on.
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