Food Shortages Coming? Famed Investor Jim Rogers Thinks So

A severe food shortage is on its way, according to well-regarded investor Jim Rogers. Food inventories are the lowest in decades and “[m]any farmers cannot get loans to buy fertilizer now, even though we have big shortages developing,” Rogers said on CNBC.

For investors, that could mean a buying opportunity in commodities, in particular coffee and cotton, Rogers said. In fact, he says commodities are a much better buying opportunity than stocks right now.

For the rest of us, a food shortage could mean skyrocketing food prices. “Sometime in the next few years, we’re going to have very serious shortages of food everywhere in the world and prices are going to go through the roof,” he said.

The Ebb and Flow of Food Prices

Food prices have certainly been on a wild ride recently. Over the past year, the iPath Dow Jones-AIG sugar ETF (SGG) has almost doubled in value and, in recent years, other commodities, like corn and coffee, have also shot up. Among the potential culprits are escalating oil prices, a rising standard of living in China and India, global warming, and dark prophesies by analysts about the pending food crisis. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the government is covering up a pending disaster of near-biblical proportions.

Daily Finance