Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming

[Guest]

Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans.

But a few big private investors are starting to make bolder and longer-term bets that the world’s need for food will greatly increase — by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment.

One has bought several ethanol plants, Canadian farmland and enough storage space in the Midwest to hold millions of bushels of grain.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/bu...in&oref=slogin

Hedge funds muck in down on the farm

Hedge funds and investment banks are swapping their Gucci for gumboots as they bet on rising food prices by buying farms.

Billions of dollars are flowing into farmland across the world as investors gorge themselves on vast tracts of Australia, South America and eastern Europe.

"Sell banks, buy cheese," Crispin Odey, manager of London-based hedge fund Odey Asset Management who has started investing in farming companies, said recently.

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage...0240858&page=1

Hedge funds make dash for the land as investors dig for hidden value

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle3222078.ece

[Andy]

Re: Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming

Any chance this will mean more farming and as such hopefully more food flooding the markets?

[Guest]

Re: Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming

Any chance this will mean more farming and as such hopefully more food flooding the markets?

I think this means food prices will go even higher.

Speculators Trying to Buy Control of Food Supply
According to the New York Times, Financial Times, and others, hedge funds and other investors are buying up farms, farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators, shipping equipment and other necessities for producing food.
Given the meltdown in the housing and financial sectors and the weakness in the U.S. economy, large investors figure that everyone has to eat, and so investing in food production is a sure thing.
That means that speculators will drive up food prices.
As Jim Hightower puts it:

“By ‘owning structure,’ they mean centralizing control of food in the hands of financial manipulators who have only one crop in mind: fat profits.

more
http://www.********.com/?p=3618

Speculators and our Food
Jim Hightower

Oh, this is just dandy! Hedge fund schemers and Wall Street manipulators – the very characters who brought us the Great American Housing Collapse – have a new target for their fast-buck profiteering: farming. EIEIO!

Speculators have long messed with farmers by artificially manipulating prices on everything from corn to soybeans. But now they’re pooling up billions of dollars from global investors to go after the farms themselves, as well as fertilizer plants, grain elevators, ships and barges, and other basic tools for producing, shipping, and storing our food supply. As one hedge-fund operator says; “It’s going on big time. There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure.’”

By "owning structure," they mean centralizing control of food in the hands of financial manipulators who have only one crop in mind: fat profits. These multibillion-dollar funds are buying thousands of farms in the U.S., Brazil, Africa, Britain and elsewhere, turning farmers into corporate laborers and viewing farmland and water as disposable inputs for the huge short-term profits investors demand. Rural communities? Move to the city. Quality of food? Advertising will cover that.

more
http://www.jimhightower.com/node/6521

[Andy]

Re: Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming

Good point. < sarcasm > It's these same wonderful "forecasters" that have had such a wonderful impact on our oil prices < /sarcasm >

[Guest]

Re: Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming

I feel these people will invest in anything if it means making a buck. Food IS NOT a good thing to invest in, if you are a speculator, because that's driving up the price for ME when I purchase it at the store!
Someone needs to do something to these idi*ts before they wreck the economy anymore than it already is.

[wendyj]

Re: Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming

Good find--bumping--we need to continue to monitor this trend.

Funny this is our aim right now to sell the two houses and buy farm land for the cows--we live on an island that is turning from farming and our government on many levels is not prudent in encouraging farmers. Our island only produces 6% of what the people would neeed in emergency.